Ireland’s prime minister has warned that Brexit negotiations between Britain and the rest of the European Union could turn vicious.
Enda Kenny also predicted that Theresa May might respond to pressure from within the Tory party and trigger Article 50 to eject the UK from the EU before next spring.
Kenny told an audience of politicians, business leaders, trade unionists and community organisations in Dublin yesterday that May has agreed with him that there would be “no return to the borders of the past” after Brexit.
Speaking at an all-island conference on Brexit’s impact on Ireland, north and south, Kenny said he had an assurance from the British prime minister that there would be “no hard border” between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and that the retention of an open border was a critical element of negotiations.
“Neither I nor the prime minister desire to limit the freedom of people on both sides of the Irish sea to trade, live, work and travel freely across these islands,” he said. “Therefore we have agreed that the benefits of the common travel area be preserved.”
Kenny said Brexit was the greatest challenge facing his country since the creation of the Irish state after gaining independence from Britain.
On the subject of hostility towards the UK, he said: “The other side of this argument may well get quite vicious after a while, because there are those around the European table who take a very poor view of the fact that Britain decided to leave.”
Sounding a sombre note as he wrapped up the first session of the conference, he urged the leaders of his fellow EU countries not to become “obsessed” over what Britain may or may not get in the discussions.
Kenny said that otherwise “Europe itself could lose the plot” over where it wants to go over the next 50 years.
All leaders of the nationalist political parties on the island, including Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams, are attending the Dublin conference. 
However, there is no significant representation from the unionist community. Both the Democratic Unionists – the largest party in Northern Ireland – and the Ulster Unionists are boycotting the event. The DUP, under Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Arlene Foster, backed a Brexit vote in the June referendum, while the UUP urged its support base to back the Remain side.
A majority of votes – 56% – cast in Northern Ireland in the EU referendum were in favour of remaining.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister, Charlie Flanagan, stressed that Dublin would press the British for a fully open, “invisible” border on the island even after the UK left the EU.
The reemergence of border controls, security checks, closed secondary roads and customs posts would enrage nationalist opinion on either side of the Irish frontier. The peace process over the past 25 years has resulted in the Irish border becoming virtually invisible with few restrictions.
Referring to an open border, Flanagan said: “I am looking primarily to the views of business leaders, particularly in the border area, in a border that sees in excess of 30,000 people every day cross to work, to go to college, to go to school or indeed for family relations.
“It is vitally important in the context of the (Brexit) negotiations next year that the matter of the invisibility of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is not only featured but is both preserved and maintained.”
Flanagan said it was a “missed opportunity” on the part of unionists for refusing to attend the conference.
Flanagan and Kenny will be in Belfast today to meet all the party leaders in Northern Ireland. Flanagan said this was in preparation for a crucial north-south ministerial council meeting in Armagh on November 18.
The north-south ministerial council is one of the key strands of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which deals with all-island relations between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. Unlike yesterday’s conference in Dublin, DUP ministers will attend the event in Armagh.