By George Fergusson, former diplomat

THE Irish Border is emerging as a conspicuous obstacle in the Brexit negotiations. Having played a minor role in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, I was pleased to see the UK Government and the EU Commission agree firmly last December that Brexit should not undermine the arrangement reached so painstakingly in 1998. Although the outline agreement reached last December remains controversial, the essence was that there should be “regulatory alignment” on either side of the Border to enable the Border to be “frictionless”. Much of the debate since has been on whether that alignment should apply to the whole of the UK, as Ruth Davidson, among others, has argued, or just to Northern Ireland. This second option, highlighted perhaps mischievously by the EU Commission, has caused alarm and derision among Unionists in Northern Ireland as well as Great Britain. It has met a total rejection from the DUP.

I used to spend a lot of time crossing the Irish Sea – I was even registered for one census on the ferry in Stranraer harbour, where I happened to be on counting night. So I have followed the arguments about moving the UK/Irish Border to the sea crossing with curiosity. Set in those terms, it is not surprising that it generates the excitement it has. But at the practical level it is potentially less exciting – or innovative – than it sounds as a slogan. In some respects, this sea border exists already. In others, it has featured in the past, including at Ulster Unionists’ request.

There have been quarantine arrangements across the Irish Sea since at least the 1880s, for sensible enough practical reasons. Real nerds can look at legislation like the Port Orders of April 1887 which designated “Places of Inspection of Animals intended for Exportation to Great Britain” at the ports of Larne, Newry, Coleraine and Portrush; or the Pleuro-Pneumonia Act 1890 which prevented cattle from the Dublin District being exported to Great Britain. The Northern Ireland authorities still inspect agricultural products crossing to and from Great Britain, including stock – and eggs. I remember, as a regular weekend traveller to Ayrshire from Belfast in the 1980s, being stopped one damp Sunday evening by a Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture inspector at Larne Harbour. He challenged the eggs we were carrying, until I could prove, by the stamps on the eggs, that they were just Northern Ireland eggs that had been to Scotland for the weekend.

In the 1940s, the Unionist Government in Belfast introduced the Northern Ireland Safeguarding of Employment Act 1947. This created a work permit regime for people seeking work in Northern Ireland who came from elsewhere – including people from Great Britain. During the negotiations to join the EEC, the British Government negotiated successfully for the Accession Treaty to let this legislation remain in place until an agreed phase-out date of 1978.

And, on tariffs, the economist John Fitzgerald has recalled that in July 1965 the then Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, proposed to Harold Wilson that Ireland should be able to cut tariffs on Northern Ireland goods more quickly than for goods from Great Britain. This was agreed. It became part of a UK-Ireland free trade agreement in December that year.

These are complicated issues. A “border down the Irish Sea” may or may not be a good idea now. But we shouldn’t overlook that hot topics like differential labour markets and port controls between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and special tariff arrangements for Northern Ireland, have been done before; and for agriculture they are there already.

* The author was in the Northern Ireland Office from 1978-91, in the UK Government negotiations team for the Good Friday Agreement from 1997-99 and later in the FCO, Cabinet Office and was Governor of Bermuda from 2012-16.