Leo Varadkar and Theresa May have agreed to intervene in talks to form a new Stormont executive later this month if the Northern Ireland parties remain deadlocked.
The taoiseach and the UK prime minister decided at their meeting in Downing Street in June, and in subsequent phone calls, that they would help to end the political stalemate that has left Stormont without an executive and assembly since January.
Varadkar said that he wanted Northern Ireland’s first minister and deputy first minister by his side when he presents Ireland’s bid to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup to the World Rugby Council in London on September 25.
Arlene Foster and Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, met the taoiseach in Belfast on Friday. The DUP leader was accompanied by Jeffrey Donaldson, the Lagan Valley MP, and Sammy Wilson, the East Antrim MP, who was on crutches following a holiday mishap.
“It was a bit of a rough meeting, I’m afraid,” Foster joked, in relation to her colleague’s plastered right foot. Wilson quipped: “But the ambulance is coming for him.”
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While Varadkar chose his language carefully for a speech at Queen’s University on Friday, he did not back away from his assertion that the “advocates of a so-called hard Brexit” have failed to convince the people of Northern Ireland “that these borders would not be barriers to trade and commerce”.
Foster said Varadkar clarified that a border in the Irish Sea was “very clearly not his preference . . . and I thanked him for that because there has been some very unhelpful interventions from some of his party members”.
The DUP leader described their encounter as “very useful and forthright”, a style she may come to know as the taoiseach signalled his intention to become a frequent visitor north of the border. “I hope people will get to know me very well as I intend to spend a lot of time in Northern Ireland, or as much as I possibly can,” said Varadkar.
He said the common travel area between Britain and Ireland was “almost like a common citizenship that allows British and Irish people to live, work, reside, study and access healthcare and housing in each other’s countries as though we were citizens of both”.
Yesterday Varadkar met members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and An Garda Siochana at the Belfast Pride march. Describing the event as “the biggest single parade, the biggest single march” in Northern Ireland this year, the taoiseach said: “That’s very significant and it talks about a very different Northern Ireland and perhaps gives us hope as to what Northern Ireland might look like in the future.
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“My reason for being here is just to express solidarity, to express my support and that of my government, for individual freedom and equality before the law for all citizens. We would do this in any part of the world.”