Ray Bassett is a former Irish diplomat. Bassett was born in Dublin and attended O'Connell School. He then attended Trinity College Dublin first earning a B.A. (mod) in biochemistry in 1973 and then a PhD in biochemistry in 1979. [1] He served as an ambassador from Ireland to Canada, Jamaica, and the Bahamas and joint Secretary to the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference in Belfast before retiring in October 2016.
He is the senior fellow for EU affairs at the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange. He is also the author of Brexit: Options for the Border and Brexit and the Border. [2] In 2020 Bassett published a book, Ireland and the EU Post Brexit, which was sharply critical of Ireland's former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. [3] [ better source needed ] Bassett alleged that Varadkar "had done everything in his power to thwart the democratic outcome in the UK [the Brexit vote in 2016] ... The gamble failed and Ireland is now facing a very difficult situation ... Opposing a fair deal for the UK was never in Ireland's interests. It was a huge blunder." [3] [ better source needed ] [4]
He is not involved with any political party and has addressed groups from the far-right Irish Freedom Party, mainstream political groups, and the Communist Party of Ireland on the left. [5]
He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2022 Dublin University by-election. [6]
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Mary Patricia McAleese is an Irish activist lawyer and former politician who served as the eighth president of Ireland from November 1997 to November 2011. She is an academic and author and holds a licentiate and doctorate in Canon law. McAleese was first elected as president in 1997, having received the nomination of Fianna Fáil. She succeeded Mary Robinson, making her the second female president of Ireland, and the first woman in the world to succeed another woman as president. She nominated herself for re-election in 2004 and was returned unopposed for a second term. McAleese is the first president of Ireland to have come from either Northern Ireland or Ulster.
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Simon Coveney is an Irish Fine Gael politician who has served as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment since December 2022 and Deputy Leader of Fine Gael since 2017. He previously served as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence from 2020 to 2022. He has served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork South-Central constituency since 1998. He previously served as Tánaiste from 2017 to 2020, Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government from 2016 to 2017 and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine from 2011 to 2016. He also served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the South constituency from 2004 to 2007.
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Events during the year 2017 in Ireland.
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Events during the year 2018 in Ireland.
The impact of Brexit on the Irish border and its adjacent polities involves changes in trade, customs, immigration checks, local economies, services, recognition of qualifications, medical cooperation, and other matters, now that it is the only external EU land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The Irish backstop was a proposed protocol to a draft Brexit withdrawal agreement that never came into force. It was developed by the May government and the European Commission in December 2017 and finalised in November 2018, that aimed to prevent an evident border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit.
Events during the year 2019 in Ireland.
Brexit negotiations in 2019 started in August, after having originally concluded in November 2018 with the release of the withdrawal agreement. Negotiations took place between the United Kingdom and the European Union during 2017 and 2018 for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union following the referendum held on 23 June 2016.
The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, commonly abbreviated to the Northern Ireland Protocol, is a protocol to the Brexit withdrawal agreement that governs the unique customs and immigration issues at the border on the island of Ireland between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union, and on some aspects of trade in goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Its terms were negotiated shortly before the 2019 general election and concluded immediately after it, in December of that year. The withdrawal agreement as a whole, including the protocol, was ratified in January 2020. The Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border has had a special status since the thirty-year internecine conflict in Northern Ireland was ended by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. As part of the Northern Ireland Peace Process, the border has been largely invisible, without any physical barrier or custom checks on its 270 crossing points; this arrangement was made possible by both countries' common membership of both the EU's Single Market and Customs Union and of their Common Travel Area.
Ireland's Future is a civic nationalist Irish non-profit company formed in 2017 to campaign for new constitutional arrangements on the island of Ireland.
The death of a Pope plus 50 years in the EU
The Government is misleading us on the border with Northern Ireland|Ray Bassett at Irexit Cork