Northern Ireland should get special associate or membership status of the EU or it will “suffer big time” after the U.K. leaves the bloc, its deputy first minister told the Guardian in an interview published Monday.
Martin McGuinness, a Sinn Féin leader, said the country should not have to bear the consequences of Brexit since the majority voted to stay in the EU.
“As things sit at the moment we are going to suffer big time,” McGuinness said. Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May “says ‘Brexit means Brexit,’ but so far as we are concerned Brexit means disaster.”
McGuinness said border, trade, peace and security problems were likely to arise, and Northern Ireland could follow Scotland’s lead if negotiations don’t go well.
“There are a lot of people here beginning to feel the same [as the Scots], and depending on how this negotiation goes, that trend will accelerate over the next couple of years,” he said. “We see our future in Europe. Scotland sees its future in Europe.”
Leaving the customs union would be particularly egregious, he said, cutting Northern Ireland off from a market of 500 million people, “yet half an hour down the road they will be able to trade freely with the EU. It would be a devastating blow.”
He added that the EU referendum was contrary to the Good Friday agreement.
“One of the main arguments, and it was a big compromise for us in Sinn Féin, was the principle of consent: that there would be no change in the constitutional position of the north without a majority of the north.
“Yet leaving the EU is a massive constitutional change, especially for those that saw dual Irish citizenship, the massive EU investment in the peace process and the wider economic investment.”