[HN Gopher] How the Good Friday Agreement created an 'all-Irelan...
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How the Good Friday Agreement created an 'all-Ireland' economy
Author : mooreds
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-04-13 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.france24.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.france24.com)
| znkynz wrote:
| The good friday agreement is genius. It allows Unionists to
| pretend they live in the UK still, and nationalists to pretend
| they live in a United Ireland.
|
| The Brits should be held to account here by all parties- EU, and
| other trading partners - Brexit should not harm the agreement
| they entered freely, and has provided peace for decades.
| hanoz wrote:
| The UK was happy to honour the Good Friday agreement by not
| having border checks at its new land border with the EU, it was
| entirely the EU which had a problem with it.
| scott_w wrote:
| This is a total lie. The EU would not allow a hard border on
| the island of Ireland, as it contravenes the GFA. The only
| options that were ever on the table were the U.K. being in a
| customs union or customs border between Britain and NI.
|
| If the U.K. wants to diverge the its regulatory regime then
| there must be customs checks where they differ, otherwise
| smuggling will thrive. Case in point, HMRC did a spot check
| at Dover (where customs checks are not currently applied) and
| found most lorries had illegal produce in them.
| hanoz wrote:
| I'm not sure how anything beyond your opening accusation is
| supposed to contradict what I've said. The party that was
| unable to reconcile its position with respect to the new
| border and the Good Friday agreement was the EU, not the
| UK.
| netsharc wrote:
| Yeah, strange, that a party that wants all the benefits but
| also to be allowed to ignore the obligations of a customs
| union (like following the food safety regulations of that
| union) couldn't get its way... /s
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Is it, though? Are you ignoring the entire issue of now needing
| an economic border either between the Irelands, or between
| Northern Ireland and Great Britain?
|
| Bitterness aside, the island being split in two makes no sense
| from an outsider.
| xrikcus wrote:
| Does Singapore make more sense? Papua New Guinea? Alaska, for
| that matter? All borders seem pretty arbitrary when you get
| down to it, but it's hardly alone in being a weird bit at the
| end of a bigger bit where one or other is part of a detached
| bit.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I don't know about Singapore or Papua New Guinea. We could
| get philosophical about Alaska, but the geo/demo-graphic
| situations are completely different from Ireland.
|
| This is an island smaller than Ohio with five million
| people on it - people with a shared history going back many
| hundreds of years and seeming to not want to be separated.
|
| Brexit threw a wrench in the idea of a seamless border
| between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. You either have
| a customs border between the islands of Ireland and GB, or
| you have a customs border between the Republic and the
| North. I don't see how it feasibly goes any other way, and
| neither of those make all parties happy.
| Veen wrote:
| > people with a shared history going back many hundreds
| of years and seeming to not want to be separated
|
| Many people in Northern Ireland--a narrow majority at the
| moment--consider themselves to be British and do not want
| to be separated from the UK. That's why it's such a
| tricky problem.
| _nalply wrote:
| Posting from the Rebublic of Ireland now, as a tourist from the
| Schengen zone. UK requests a passport, but the Rebublic does not.
| So we flew in with ID cards only then drove into UK not having
| passports and this is explicitly allowed. Border crossing doesn't
| feel like border crossing at all. A small sign and a change of
| road sign is all. Suddenly the speed is signaled differently (mph
| vs. km/h). Even the driving culture is the same: speedy but
| careful and respectful.
|
| In other words, this agreement seemed to have survived Brexit.
| odiroot wrote:
| You could potentially enter Britain without a passport this
| way, taking a ferry.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Yep, did a trip that was Dublin to Belfast, ferry to
| Scotland, train from Edinburgh to London, only checked the
| passport once.
| TomWhitwell wrote:
| I went from London to Paris last week, only checked the
| passport once.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| From my understanding, UK Border Force doesn't do exit
| controls on that route by the Chunnel, but France (or
| security?) reports exits back to UK.
|
| The reverse has juxtaposed controls where you deal with
| both French exit controls and UK entry controls at the
| departure railway station.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juxtaposed_controls
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I have travelled to the continent several times on the
| Eurostar and each time I got my passport checked twice in
| St Pancras Station in London, within a few metres of each
| other. Once by UK authorities and then by French
| authorities.
| Symbiote wrote:
| And I have walked past the unmanned UK booths to the
| French one several times, but anecdotes are pretty
| useless in these discussions.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Pretty sure the UK has never done exit controls. I
| remember being surprised at being asked for my passport
| at the border post the first time I flew out of Schengen
| since officials don't check your passport flying out of
| the UK.
| hanoz wrote:
| You shouldn't have needed to show a passport at any point
| in that journey.
| thomond wrote:
| You need ID going from NI to Britain so he may have used
| his passport for that.
| hanoz wrote:
| You do not.
| scott_w wrote:
| No, you don't. Northern Ireland is part of the U.K. so it
| would be like asking for a passport to travel from
| Berwick to Eyemouth.
|
| I've been on this ferry trip post-Brexit and the only
| thing the border police are interested in is whether a
| dissident planted a bomb under your car when you weren't
| looking.
| netsharc wrote:
| https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government_in_irela
| nd/...
|
| The language says "may" and "should". You have to be a
| citizen of Ireland or the UK, and they may ask you to
| prove that you are. And if you're neither, you have to
| have a passport, but the checks may happen, or (more
| likely) they won't happen.
|
| So, do you need ID as grandparent poster said, or "you
| don't", as you claim? The answer is... it depends. Mostly
| it depends whether there are checks or not. Technically I
| could've driven the last several thousand miles of my
| driving "career" without my driver's license, but
| legally, I could've been stopped and been asked to
| present it.
| anotherhue wrote:
| Ireland isn't part of Schengen however, primarily because
| Britain wasn't and Ireland wanted to align with them for the
| sake of the border.
|
| > Today, the Schengen Area encompasses most EU countries,
| except for Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland and Romania
|
| https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-...
| _nalply wrote:
| Of course, we passed border control at the airports. They
| accepted our ID cards.
| netsharc wrote:
| That's because inside the EU, travel to another EU country
| with just your EU ID is allowed. The fact that crossing
| from Republic of Ireland (part of EU) into the Northern
| Ireland (part of UK, no longer part of the EU) with just
| the ID is allowed is another curious paradox in this
| trying-to-fit-a-square-peg-into-a-round-hole of Brexit...
| hanoz wrote:
| The fact that you don't need ID to move between Northern
| Ireland and the rest of it, has precisely nothing to do
| with Brexit.
| netsharc wrote:
| You're all over this comments thread trying to say black
| is white (let me guess, you're pro UK and pro Brexit?),
| but I refer you to my comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35562072
|
| I rephrase, technically I haven't needed to carry my
| driving license for the last several years of my driving
| career, but legally, I may be asked to present it at any
| time. I'd take the advice of the website cited above
| rather than believe you. I.e. you could be asked to prove
| that you're a UK/Irish citizen (easiest with ID or
| passport), and if you're a EU citizen entering the UK
| (the website even mentions crossing the Irish sea to
| enter Great Britain), you have to have a passport
| (although you might not be asked for it).
|
| Before Brexit, the UK was part of the EU, and other
| EUians was allowed to enter it with just their ID card.
| So...
| secondcoming wrote:
| The Common Travel Area pre-exists the Good Friday Agreement by
| a few decades.
|
| The only changes Brexit brought about are Duty-Free shopping
| again, and I have recently - for the first time in 20 years
| commuting between RoI and UK - had my bag checked by Airport
| Customs in Ireland.
|
| There was a very small risk that the CTA would be at risk due
| to Brexit so I know of some Irish people who obtained UK
| passports in case it did happen.
| firstlink wrote:
| > Suddenly the speed is signaled differently (mph vs. km/h).
|
| The scariest part in practice of crossing from the US to
| Canada, or vice-versa I presume.
| zeagle wrote:
| How so? Just the psychological difference in seeing higher
| numbers? I find the highways in the USA are much better
| quality. My biggest fear is running across some podunk town's
| overzealous law enforcement when everyone is doing 10+ miles
| over the limit in the USA and having Canadian plates. Or
| crazy road violence incident where they have a gun but I
| realize that isn't a rationale fear.
| kwyjibo1230 wrote:
| I visited both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland the
| other week, and it was exactly like this. I was worried at
| first about delays from going through customs, etc. on the trip
| between the two. But, I took a train from Dublin to Belfast,
| and it felt like nothing changed apart from the currency and
| signage. It was great to see such an open connection between
| the two countries!
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