All potential British solutions to the post-Brexit Border are filled with difficulty and would leave smaller businesses struggling to cope, UK experts have said.
It comes as a leaked British government papers outline major concerns just two months before Britain is due to leave the EU, according to a report.
Critics said the paper, seen by the Guardian, should “ring alarm bells” across government over how likely it is that alternative arrangements to the backstop will be found.
Fears have risen across the border region in recent months an old customs post on its border with the UK into a construction site.
The Office of Public Works said it did not “currently” have any plans for the site.
However, Cllr Gary Doherty said this has done little to reassure the community.
Speaking to a British newspaper, the Donegal Cllr said: “The closer we get to a ‘no deal’ Brexit the more it looks like this will have to be a customs post.
“For years nothing has happened to it, and then in the run-up to March [the original Brexit deadline], they cleared away the buildings. It seems like a very strange coincidence,” he added.
According to the article, a major row broke out with Brussels in January when the European Commission’s official spokesman let slip that a hard border would have to go up after a ‘no deal’ Brexit.
It was the first time that the EU appeared to warn Ireland in public that it needed to prepare to carry out checks around the border in a ‘crash-out’ scenario.
However, Dublin responded by issuing a strongly-worded denial and urged the Commission to row back on the claim, which it eventually did.
George Mills, from Donegal and a road haulier and spokesman for the Border Communities Against Brexit campaign group, said he was concerned that any new infrastructure would be a target for extremists.
He said: “There will be more opportunities for smuggling, and whether they [dissidents] go and pull down a customs post, well, that’s possible, I would worry about something like that,” he said.
“I would worry about ordinary people doing a job putting their lives in danger. Anything that makes that more possible is surely not a good thing.”
