Anti-Brexit group to target vote of UK-based Irish

Irish business groups are among the backers of a new campaign to persuade Irish people living in the United Kingdom to vote for Britain to stay in the European Union.

Irish4Europe, which will be launched on Thursday in the House of Commons, will work through Irish business networks and community groups in Britain to get its message across to the hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens living in the country.

The group’s formation comes as pro-EU campaigners express concern that a Brexit’s implications for Ireland are being overlooked in the debate.

Former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke told a Dublin audience on Wednesday of major difficulties arising from a vote to leave the union.

Enormous problems

“The risk of a possible

Brexit

could pose enormous problems for the UK,” Mr Clarke said at an AIB event. “I think it would pose enormous problems for the Republic of Ireland as well, and so far most electors in Britain have not been made aware of that.

Irish citizens, along with those from Malta and Cyprus, are the only citizens of other EU member-states allowed to vote in the June 23rd referendum.

“We know there’s about half a million, maybe 600,000 first-generation Irish. We know that from the passport figures,” said Brian O’Connell, UK director of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Irish4Europe steering committee.

‘Ethnic minority’

“If you then add in the second- or third-generation Irish, the number quickly ramps up into millions,” he said. “We’re probably the largest ethnic minority in the country.”

Other members of the steering committee include Liz Shanahan, chair of the Irish International Business Network; Rory Godson, chief of communications firm Powerscourt; Frank O'Hare of Doveguard Construction and the London Irish Construction Network; and Laura Sandys, a former Tory MP who heads the European Movement UK.

Two British government reports have warned of negative consequences of Brexit for Ireland.

These could include the return of customs checks on the Border and a threat to the Common Travel Area, in place since 1923, as well as damage to agriculture and trade.