Our government’s stupidity wrt NI...

View · 31-01-2021 1:54pm #1

The level of our government’s stupidity wrt NI is astonishing.

Over the last few days, we have had the entire AZ vaccine saga.The nub of this is that AZ decided to prioritise vaccine delivery to the U.K. over vaccine delivery to EU countries. As a result of this, that means that the U.K. (including NI) will have - relatively speaking - a “surplus” of vaccine doses when compared with the “shortage” of vaccine doses in EU countries (including Ireland).

Yet when the Commission drew up plans for the potential export ban and put all of the U.K. (including NI) on the potential ban list, our government went nuts over it and started protesting about it.

This is completely ludicrous as:
1) NI, as part of the U.K. will have a (relative) “surplus” of the vaccine, whereas we will have a (relative) “shortage” of it,
2) no one in NI is proposing that any of their “surplus” vaccine be sent across the border to help out with our vaccine “shortage” here,
3) due to our “shortage” we just do not have any vaccine lying around that could be sent across the border without it resulting in a “coals to Newcastle” situation, with people here dying as a direct result of an artificially increased shortage in our vaccine supplies.

Our government’s entire protests seem to be based on the hypothetical possibility that we could engage in vaccine gesture politics and send vaccines, that we don’t have, to a place that has more vaccine than we do.

This is the height of stupidity and merely the latest example of a trait that our governments engage in again and again. If our government insist on “blurring the border”, and strives to eliminate any inconvenience it causes, there will never be a reason for a majority in NI (of any background) to back a UI - why should they when they get to avoid all the inconveniences of it, while simultaneously getting to keep all the conveniences of it (ie those of being in the U.K.)?

31-01-2021 2:01pm

We should accept the border is there and we are in the EU.

The pre covid debate about GFA and open borders seems non-sensical now with Germany banning Irish travel, for instance, and we are in the EU.

Post Covid we need to accept that the border is there and act like that.

screamer · 31-01-2021 2:06pm

At least they’re showing consistency with stupidity.
We need to rethink the border issue altogether, for us exports is the biggest issue, for NI it is the amount of employment they have from the Republic. Either way Ireland south and north will just be pawns caught in the middle of the battles between EU and Uk when both are following a protectionist strategy. We need to pick our side, there’s no point trying to please both, we’ll just see more of this stupid pandering from our government.

Fr Tod Umptious · 31-01-2021 2:23pm

Deleted User wrote: »

We should accept the border is there and we are in the EU.

The pre covid debate about GFA and open borders seems non-sensical now with Germany banning Irish travel, for instance, and we are in the EU.

Post Covid we need to accept that the border is there and act like that.

But COVID is short term.
Borders will be open in a year or less.
Travel will be back to some normality in a year or less.

The government consistently argued against a border on the island and it's dead right to continue to argue against it.

jimd2 · 31-01-2021 3:03pm

You can be dam sure this debacle would not have happened if Michael and Leo had not thrown Phil Hogan under the bus over golfgate - Phil is cute enough and is well enough connected and had a strong enough position within the commission to see this one off.

It turns out the the government wasn't even informed of this decision by the EU.

Good old hangman Leo has taken the party members that had their whip removed back into the fold. And the nhigh court judge was able to stick it out and is now untouched with a wounded government.

Jim O'Callaghan of FF castigated them over this as did Stephen Collins of the Irish Times.

The turkeys came home to roost here big time and I am not connected to big Phil in any way shape(!) or form.

31-01-2021 4:08pm

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

But COVID is short term.
Borders will be open in a year or less.
Travel will be back to some normality in a year or less.

The government consistently argued against a border on the island and it's dead right to continue to argue against it.

But Ireland is arguing against the border now. During Covid and related to a Covid issue ( i.e. vaccines).

The EU might ask us to choose eventually.

screamer wrote: »

At least they’re showing consistency with stupidity.
We need to rethink the border issue altogether, for us exports is the biggest issue, for NI it is the amount of employment they have from the Republic. Either way Ireland south and north will just be pawns caught in the middle of the battles between EU and Uk when both are following a protectionist strategy. We need to pick our side, there’s no point trying to please both, we’ll just see more of this stupid pandering from our government.

Yes and the only possible side is the EU. However well the UK can survive outside the EU or not, we certainly can't.

Seth Brundle · 31-01-2021 7:25pm

Deleted User wrote: »

The EU might ask us to choose eventually.

They might also ask us to wear a tutu and dance instead of walk. It won’t happen in reality though!

View · 31-01-2021 10:42pm

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

But COVID is short term.
Borders will be open in a year or less.
Travel will be back to some normality in a year or less.

The government consistently argued against a border on the island and it's dead right to continue to argue against it.

Arguing against a border hasn’t altered the fact there is in over a hundred years. Nor is it likely to alter the fact there is for decades to come.

When you eliminate all the negatives of there being a border, then the majority in NI will conclude there is no reason to alter the status quo.

View · 31-01-2021 10:48pm

Seth Brundle wrote: »

They might also ask us to wear a tutu and dance instead of walk. It won’t happen in reality though!

And, why not? Why should the EU countries suffer a vaccine shortage because we want the theoretical right to send vaccine doses we won’t get from AZ to a place that will get them and which won’t send us any?

It’s like the Life of Brian bit where one of Palestinian resistance organisations drafts a demand for men to have the right to get pregnant and bear children, because who cares about letting biological reality get in the way of a theoretical demand?

Podge_irl · 01-02-2021 4:38pm

View wrote: »

And, why not? Why should the EU countries suffer a vaccine shortage because we want the theoretical right to send vaccine doses we won’t get from AZ to a place that will get them and which won’t send us any?

This is a gross misunderstanding of both the reason for the threat of use of Article 16 and the reason for Ireland's objection to it. There is zero indication or suggestion of Ireland sending vaccines to the north.

View · 02-02-2021 1:02am

Podge_irl wrote: »

This is a gross misunderstanding of both the reason for the threat of use of Article 16 and the reason for Ireland's objection to it. There is zero indication or suggestion of Ireland sending vaccines to the north.

No it is not.

The reason for the possible triggering of Art 16 was, and is, to prevent a situation where life saving vaccine, for which there is a massive shortage in the EU, could be exported from the EU to non-EU countries, where there is much less of a shortage / a relative “surplus” (when compared with the situation in the EU, including Ireland).

That’s the situation that currently applies in the case of AZ where an estimated twenty percent of the AZ vaccines supplied in the U.K. have been exported from plants in the EU to the U.K.

Given the reality of the above, the EC drew up the art 16 list of countries. They included NI because it is part of the U.K. and, hence, has and will have a relative “surplus” (compared with us and the rest of the EU) for weeks, if not months to come.

At that point, of course, our government had a totally wobbly about NI being included on that list.

Like it not, our government’s hissy fit over the inclusion of NI in the list has meant that the EU has now lost the possibility of using art 16 against AZ/the U.K. That means that AZ will be free to continue to export life saving vaccine from the EU to the U.K. thanks to our government’s overreaction.

And as I pointed out, the absurdity of our government’s position is that do we not have any surplus vaccine that we could export to NI even if we wanted to do so, and the likelihood of NI exporting some of their vaccine to us is slim to none.

Kermit.de.frog · 02-02-2021 1:19am

You seem to be missing the point completely. The government does not want a physical border on the island.

That is why the EU had to do a u-turn.

It has nothing to do with who gets what vaccine. That's just a side effect.

Good loser · 02-02-2021 2:37am

Podge_irl wrote: »

This is a gross misunderstanding of both the reason for the threat of use of Article 16 and the reason for Ireland's objection to it. There is zero indication or suggestion of Ireland sending vaccines to the north.

That is correct in my book and View is wrong in his reading of the situation.

The EU merely wanted to monitor the outflow of vaccines from the Union as they were unhappy with the answers Astra were giving to their requests for information. To cover all their bases some over officious mandarin decided Chapter 16 should be invoked and it went under the radar.

This is discussed in detail in the Brexit thread.

Podge_irl · 02-02-2021 10:22am

There is no such thing as an "art 16 list of countries". Art 16 is part of the Northern Ireland protocol.

The EU wanted to implement Art 16 which would enable them to put customs controls in place between the EU and NI. This would stop a theoretical movement of vaccines from e.g. Belgium to NI and onward shipment to the UK. It was a completely unnecessary overreach and would have undermined the years of work that went into the NI protocol in the first place.

View · 02-02-2021 4:03pm

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

You seem to be missing the point completely. The government does not want a physical border on the island.

That is why the EU had to do a u-turn.

It has nothing to do with who gets what vaccine. That's just a side effect.

Again, that just means that people in the EU (including here) will die as a direct result of life saving vaccine being exported from the EU to the U.K.

Death is a pretty big side effect of our government’s policy. If that doesn’t count as stupidity, it is hard to see what does.

Retr0gamer · 02-02-2021 5:26pm

View wrote: »

Death is a pretty big side effect of our government’s policy. If that doesn’t count as stupidity, it is hard to see what does.

I'd be more thinking about the massive economic issues and also indirectly the deaths that were caused by having a border on the island would be a lot worse of a situation to return to, not to mention the huge effort it took to get rid of that border.

Our government’s stupidity wrt NI...

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