DUBLIN // Northern Ireland’s high court is considering a challenge to Brexit from a coalition of petitioners who argue that the country faces profound consequences for its peace and stability when the UK leaves the European Union.
In a three-day judicial review, which ended on Thursday, lawyers for the petitioners expressed concerns that Brexit would bring back a “hard border” between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, complete with customs barriers and security checkpoints. Such a border would, the lawyers argued, violate the Good Friday peace accord of 1998.
The high court is expected to deliver a judgment soon, although it has not yet set a date.
The anti-Brexit lawyers represent a range of interests: political parties such as the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP); human rights groups such as the Human Rights Consortium and the Committee on the Administration of Justice and individuals.
Roughly 56 per cent of voters in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU in the UK referendum held on June 23.
But many citizens of Northern Ireland as well as the republic – which is an EU member – are now concerned about what will happen to the 300-mile border between the two countries.
At the moment, the border is porous. Motorists can pass between Ireland and Northern Ireland and back without any checks, as can agricultural or manufactured products. But with the UK withdrawing from the common market, the invisibility of the border might have to be relinquished if tariffs and customs controls return to goods passing between the two countries.
The British government has, however, said it will fight for special legal status so that the border can remain “soft”.
Last year, Northern Ireland exported nearly £2.1 billion (Dh9.5bn) worth of goods to Ireland, out of its total exports of £6.3bn. Nearly 90 per cent of Northern Ireland’s agricultural income comes from selling produce, dairy and meat to markets in the EU.
“Brexit changes things completely,” Colum Eastwood, the leader of the SDLP, said after the June 23 vote.
The Good Friday agreement was signed and ratified after decades of violence – known as The Troubles – between unionists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK, and nationalists, who wanted a united Ireland.
On Thursday, David Scoffield, a counsel for the anti-Brexit petitioners, told the high court that many of the terms of the Good Friday agreement depend upon the presence of a soft border.
He also argued that triggering Article 50 – which British prime minister Theresa May plans to do by the end of March, beginning the process of detaching Britain from the EU – should be put to a vote by the British parliament. It should not be the prime minister’s prerogative alone to trigger Article 50, he said.
Another counsel, Ronan Lavery, said on Tuesday that the Good Friday agreement implicitly gave Northern Ireland a veto over departure from the EU.
“The people of Northern Ireland have control over constitutional change,” Mr Lavery said. “It cannot be imposed upon the people of Northern Ireland.”
But Tony McGleenan, the lawyer for the British government, contended that Brexit is now inevitable. “That ship has sailed,” he said. Invoking Article 50, he argued, was merely “an administrative step ... There is no legal impediment to the government giving effect to the will of the people”.
He added that the Good Friday agreement referred frequently to EU law only because it was in operation at the time, and not because it was central to the agreement itself.
The court is expected to reconvene over the coming week, even as another legal challenge to Brexit gets under way in the high court of England and Wales in London on Thursday.
That case, put forward by a crowdfunded movement called the People’s Challenge, will also seek to force parliament to approve the triggering of Article 50.
Paul Maguire, the judge hearing the case in Belfast, said he would give “immediate consideration” to the arguments but that to expect the judiciary to reverse a decision like Brexit “is not realistic”.
“Surely these are matters for the government to decide, not matters for a court to decide?” he said.
Meanwhile, speaking to the Irish parliament’s lower house on Tuesday, Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister, referred to statements by British politicians that they would work to prevent a full return to the hard border that existed before 1998.
“These are clear statements and they need to be backed up,” Mr Kenny said.
SSubramanian@thenational.ae
