DUBLIN WRITERS

AN IRISH WARSHIP, the LE Aoibhinn, which slipped quietly into Belfast port recently, could be employed patrolling the customs border in the Irish Sea between the European Union and that part of the United Kingdom not still under EU trade rules, says a leading strategic thinker.

“It’s lightly armed – some machine guns – in the Irish military tradition – it’s an inshore patrol boat, and it would add muscle to the reality that Northern Ireland is joined to the European Union as far as trade laws its prevail on the island of Ireland,” insists Professor Myers Mudley-Hurrys of the Wolfe Tone Institute based in New York. “The customs border in the Irish Sea is real and needs to be patrolled, so the Irish Republic being the immediate and proximate sovereign authority representing the European Union, is the obvious and available power to do it. The Brits can’t do it because they are outside the European Union. Indeed, I can see the need for a permanent Irish Naval presence in Belfast and possibly Derry in the future to enforce European Union rules, as they do with fishing. The Irish boats might fly the EU flag alongside the Irish Republican tricolor, but they will be Irish Naval vessels enforcing sovereign authority.”