Former top Irish diplomat explains how Ireland was used by EU during Brexit and how Brussels does not have our best interests at heart
Dr Ray Bassett, a former senior diplomat at Department of Foreign Affairs, who also served as the Irish Ambassador to Canada, Jamaica and the Bahamas has said that Ireland was used by Brussels as a tool to make Brexit difficult for the UK.
Despite at one time having a pro-EU outlook, Dr Basset told a webinar hosted by Yale University last night entitled Peacebuilding in the Wake of Brexit.
“My experience of the EU, particularly during what’s known as the global crisis, when huge amounts of debts being pushed on the Irish state that we had not run up ourselves and we got very little support or help from the EU, very unfairly, made me feel when it comes to the crunch Ireland would not rate that highly in terms of the priorities of Brussels.”
We rated highly during Brexit negotiations because we were very useful to use the border issue to tie the British into Europe.
So, I felt at that stage that the balance of advantage of staying in the European Union that the British left was beginning to tilt away from that and towards a position somewhat like Norway or Switzerland or Iceland, where we were not under direct control of Brussels, but we stayed very close to them in terms of the single market.”
Anti-EU sentiment has been steadily growing in Ireland in recent years with greater and greater numbers questioning the narrative of the EU as a benevolent overlord as pushed by the political and media establishment.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.