Brexit’s Irish Question

The UK’s exit from the European Union (EU) is very consequential for the island of Ireland because of the shared and contested border between the north and south of the country. The Irish state elite was alert to the potential problems of Brexit before the referendum was held and moved quickly to manage the fall-out once the result was known. The Irish response falls into three phases that are analysed in this paper. First, the period up to the Art.50 notification from the UK during which the Irish government persuaded their European counterparts that Brexit was very problematic for Ireland and that there could be no return to the borders of the past. The second phase consisted of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations that end in autumn 2018 with the May deal that failed to garner sufficient support in the House of Commons. The third phase was dominated by the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and the change to the Withdrawal Agreement placing a border on the Irish Sea. The paper analyses the manner in which the Irish government managed a two level bargaining environment across the three phases and successfully ensured that its preferences became those of the EU.