EC staff in Northern Ireland taking low-key approach to leaving

The answering phone at the European Commission’ Belfast office was is still playing the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy — as if to paraphrase the old Guinness advert and insist the EU is Good for You.

Now there is a slogan the Remainers might have usefully deployed. But now it was too late and at 5pm on Friday, the commission office will close to the public.

That will mean three redundancies of locally employed staff, one of them the office’s press officer Catherine McShane who professional to the last went to the trouble of finding out for The Irish Times what the EU was worth to Northern Ireland in cash terms.

Going back to 1989, she was able to provide figures showing that the EU supported the peace process, agriculture, fisheries, jobs and much more to the tune of more than €13 billion.

That did not include the matched one-for-one funding provided by the British government and Northern Executive, as well as other less clearly defined supports that came from Europe.

Head of the office, Colette FitzGerald was over in London on business on Thursday.

As a commission official she will keep her job. On such a momentous occasion one might have expected a valedictory comment from FitzGerald on behalf of the commission but instead she was keeping it low ke. It was a case therefore of the North leaving the EU with more of a whimper than a bang.

As Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has observed, it is only “half time” in the formal work of exiting Europe, and that there is much negotiation to be concluded. That may have explained her reticence.

Or perhaps on the final day she didn’t want to reawaken the bitter Brexit battles of the past three years that were partly responsible for polarising politics and left a big swathe of people, particularly nationalists, disenchanted over the loss of a connection with Europe that had helped diminish some of the old sectarian and constitutional divisions.

A majority in Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU but the British, mostly English, decision to leave meant the North must exit too.

Unintended consequences

Many unionists viewed quitting the EU as strengthening the union but as per the law of unintended consequences it seems to have bolstered the push for a Border poll on a united Ireland.

Maybe, and perhaps wisely, FitzGerald did not wish to make comments that might further inflame that debate. It was therefore left to others to mark the importance of the day.

The moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Rev Dr William Henry issued a neatly balanced statement that did capture how this was a day that was not just about politics or European bureaucracy, but was about people.

“Here on the island of Ireland, there is no doubt that today marks the end of an era for both the UK and the Republic of Ireland and a change in European, national and local relationships,” he said.

Dr Henry remarked on how his church has many members in border areas and in both jurisdictions, congregations he had visited in October, “who will be immediately impacted by the UK’s changed relationship with the European Union.

“What was apparent to me then, across all of my engagements with farmers and business people among others, is that while much of the national discussion has concentrated on economic factors, the impact on people and relationships in particular is perhaps more important,” he said.

“At the centre of all of this are people who are simply trying to do the best for their families, employees and communities.

Today, Friday January 31st, will not only leave people with a range of emotions, hopes and fears, but also marks the next stage in the redefining of the UK’s relationship with the EU. There is much important work still be done in negotiating new arrangements.”

And as the island faces into the Brexit unknown, Dr Henry offered prayers “for those in leadership, and especially the newly formed Northern Ireland Executive, as it seeks to find solutions to the many presenting issues that remain”.