The European Parliament's Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, has said it is up to the UK to find a way to avoid new controls on the Irish border, which echoes the position already laid out by the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. Mr. Verhofstadt is in Northern Ireland to meet political leaders at Stormont ahead of a visit to the Irish border.
Former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hain is set to accuse the government of playing a dangerous game with the peace process over its handling of Brexit and the border. The House of Lords is due to debate a report on Brexit later this Tuesday. Lord Hain is expected to address the UK's recent proposals for the border.
The United Kingdom government has said it does not want any border posts between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in its new position paper on Brexit. The paper is part of its negotiations with the European Union and the broad ideas in the document appear familiar.
Ireland is against the imposition of an economic border with Northern Ireland and the Irish government is not going to help Britain design one, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday.
The EU’s negotiators will work to keep the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland “as open as possible” after Brexit, the President of the bloc, Jean-Claude Juncker, said after meeting Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.
The Irish government said on Tuesday it has introduced a number of specific measures to help firms that might be affected by the uncertainty caused by Britain's vote to leave the European Union (EU). The measures include an extension of the Special Assignee Relief Program, which gives designated individuals income tax relief for work done in the country until the end of 2020.
The Irish Farmers' Association has described an European Union offer to allow limited access to the EU market for Mercosur beef producers as “unfair”. The offer, which includes beef producers in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, is about to be presented to European Union member states for discussion, ahead of a proposed formal exchange of offers as part of the EU-Mercosur trade negotiations in May.
Ireland’s High Court ordered an investigation into Facebook’s transfer of European Union users’ data to the United States to make sure personal privacy was properly protected from US government surveillance.
An Argentine newspaper has claimed that Irish players received bribes not to injure Lionel Messi at the opening game in the Aviva Stadium in 2010, but the story has been dismissed in the strongest possible terms by the Irish football association, FAI. According to La Nacion, a Fifa official was forced to go to extraordinary lengths to bring the Barcelona superstar and his team mates to Dublin.
Irish authorities have identified a suspected case of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, on a dairy farm in County Louth, the first such case to be discovered in the country since 2013. The Irish Department of Agriculture said on Thursday the five-year-old diseased cow was discovered as part of ongoing inspections of animals that die on farms.