No issue in peacetime has preoccupied the Irish elite and public to the same extent as the United Kingdom’s renegotiation, referendum and vote to withdraw from the European Union.

Although the Irish Republic’s accession to the then European Economic Community helped it move away from its dependence on the UK, the two countries have maintained close economic, social and political relations. They have also cooperated on many issues relating to the Northern Ireland peace process. The Common Travel Area that Ireland and the UK share – which allows for free movement and establishment across Ireland, the UK and some UK dependencies – has existed for nearly a century. The frictionless borders that came about as a consequence of the end of the Northern Ireland conflict, as well as joint membership of the EU and its customs union, have contributed to turning the islands that the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic share into an inextricably linked social space, ensuring that the two countries’ present and futures are entwined. The result is that the two countries share far more convergent interests than divergent ones.

It should come as little surprise, then, that the prospect of the UK’s renegotiations, and David Cameron’s ill-fated promise of a high-risk referendum on EU membership, was not warmly received in Dublin. Indeed, Irish policy makers recognized early on that both of these developments had the potential to fundamentally alter the nature of the bilateral relationship. Neither was seen as conducive to the furthering of mutual interests. Although the issue did not truly enter the public consciousness until the referendum campaign in 2016, the UK’s EU membership renegotiation and the potential for withdrawal were taken seriously by policy makers and analysts from the very beginning.

BACKGROUND

To understand why Brexit carries such importance in Ireland, it is necessary to briefly examine British–Irish relations in the EU context.

On 1 January 1973, fifty years after gaining independence, Ireland became a member of the EEC in the company of the UK and Denmark. The decision to join had been less an ideological conviction, however, and more an exercise in realpolitik: if the UK chose to join the EEC then Ireland had no option but to follow suit.