Sir, – Noel Whelan writes that he agrees with Phil Hogan, when he says that Brexit is messy and will only get messier ("British cannot be allowed to set the pace on Brexit", Opinion & Analysis, January 13th).
It would appear to me that there are a lot of people with vested interests in the European Union who are determined to make things as messy as possible for the British in their efforts to escape from the grasping clutches of our European “partners”.
It is notable that The Irish Times and the Irish media in general would seem to be singing off the same hymn sheet as our esteemed European Commissioner Phil Hogan, and his political fellow traveller Charlie Flanagan, in their anti-Brexit rhetoric.
I, for one, am not a member of “Team Europe” nor will I ever be. I know from speaking to other Irish people that I am not alone in this view.
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It would be nice, even if only for a change of scenery, to allow dissenting voices put forward their opinion on whether we in Ireland should remain part of the EU, or whether we should leave.
I have always felt that we should join in a economic and freedom of movement partnership with the other English-speaking countries, such as the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, and perhaps adopt one of their currencies instead of the euro, which is in all likelihood doomed anyway.
We share cultural links with all of these countries going back centuries, so why are we wasting our time with Europeans who have shown from the economic crash that they couldn’t care less about Ireland or the Irish? – Yours, etc,
AIDAN COYLE,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.
A chara, – Stephen Oliver Murray (January 11th) suggests that Ireland owes Britain a special loyalty, in spite of the fact that Theresa May seems set to unleash a destructive and divisive hard Brexit on our country and the EU. To support his proposition, Mr Murray references the UK's €3.8 billionn loan to Ireland during the depths of the global financial crisis, asking whether any EU nation besides the UK would offer us such support.
At the same time that the UK offered us a €3.8 billion loan to protect its own bloated banking sector, exposed to the Irish crisis to the tune of £140 billion, Sweden and Denmark offered us €600 million and €400 million bilateral loans respectively.
Both Scandinavian countries offered us more bilateral support per capita than the UK, despite their vastly smaller exposure to our crisis.
Of course, these sums pale in comparison to the €40.2 billion loan we received from the EU itself.
If Ireland’s loyalty is for sale, it should go to our various partners in the EU, and not to Brexit Britain. – Is mise,
RORY CROTTY,
Douglas,
Cork.
Sir — Eoin Ó Murchú's assertion (January 6th) that we do more trade with the UK than we do with the rest of the EU is untrue and has been for many years.
According to the latest CSO figures from 2015, we do over twice as much trade with other EU countries as we do with the UK, a figure that has been growing steadily for years.
More importantly perhaps, in terms of Ireland’s world export trade, the UK accounts for 18 per cent, a figure that has been dropping steadily over the same period.
By virtue of the same figures, the German-Irish Chamber of Industry’s claim (Noel Whelan, “No point denying we may have to leave the EU”, Opinion & Analysis, January 6th) that Brexit would mean that Ireland’s two main trading partners, the US and UK, would be outside the EU, is also untrue, as the EU would still be the biggest, with the North American Free Trade Area (the US, Canada and Mexico) second.
The latest numbers from Eurostat (2013) and the UK reveneue and customs show that Britain’s trade with the EU represented 48 per cent of its total global trade. whereas the UK represented 15 per cent of the EU’s internal trade. So Nigel Farage’s claim that the EU needs Britain more than Britain needs the EU is a complete fallacy.
Exports are one of the arteries of any economy. It seems to me that, rather than have all our eggs in one basket, we acted wisely when we decided to join the EU. Let’s hope we don’t fall into the “post-truth” abyss. – Yours, etc,
DAVID MURPHY,
Ardilea,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – So, 2017 dawns and the question remains the same. What are you having for Brexit? – Yours, etc,
OLIVER McGRANE,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.