IT’S HARDLY SURPRISING – given the current political climate – that most interviews with high-profile Irish individuals will steer itself in the direction of Brexit.
In recent weeks, Saoirse Ronan discussed the implications of a hard border during an interview with Harper’s Bazaaar, and in recent days Colin Farrell offered his opinion while speaking to Sky News.
When discussion turned to Brexit’s potential repercussions, including its threat to the Irish economy as well as the peace process, Colin quickly replied:
All I’d say on that is that the idea of a hard border is just shocking; it’s just shocking.
“The progress that has been made over the last, you know, twenty years is astonishing, is life-affirming, is life-affecting,” he continued.
Envisioning a potential hard border, Colin said he feared that it would instantly diminish the progress which has been over the course of the last two decades.
The idea that, you know, a hard border and armed guards will be there on the border, dividing a line between north and south is… I think the implications of it, and I think how that would galvanise people, who still have maybe a little bit of doubt as to the worth of the peace process, I think it would galvanise them in a very unfortunate way, and I just think that has to be at all costs avoided.
While he is against the reintroduction of a hard border, he doesn’t believe that the relationship with Irish and British people will instantly disintegrate if it is to be introduced, but maintains that a percentage will use it to their advantage.
“I don’t necessarily think so,” he replied when asked whether a border will be to the utter detriment of Irish/British relations. “I think for a certain pocket of communities, yes.”
“But those who it will affect in a negative way already reside within a certain negativity in the perception of each other,” he added. “I don’t think it would change black to white or white to black.”
I think we’ve come too far and I think we enjoy a relationship that is born of a lot of hardship in the past that we have fought hard, and dealt with decently to get through, that I don’t think it will shatter that, but the hard border has to be avoided at all costs.
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