Food shortages in the North and in London are looking more and more likely if a Brexit trade deal isn’t worked out soon.
That’s the view of Kilkenny man John Bryan who’s on the European Economic and Social Committee as the talks between the EU and the UK continue this week.
John’s been telling KCLR’s The Way It Is with Sue Nunn that he believes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson does have a plan to secure a deal at the last minute.
But he says he’s want to do it fast noting “The nightmare scenario is you run into January without a deal, no proper clearance for trucks, most places haven’t the proper infrastructure in place and then a lack of movement for a period and we even see some people in the North saying they could be short of food, my own belief has always been if it’s not ratified that within a fortnight there’ll be a shortage of food in the greater London area”.
Mr Bryan says the feeling in Brussels is that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s strategy always seems to be to cobble a deal together last minute and that seems to be the plan again this time saying “Boris Johnson was always going to do this deal himself, the withdrawal agreement, which was very little different from the Teresa May deal that he threw out, he negotiated that himself at the last minute and I believe it was always his intention to do this at the last minute, but just he has to get it done, and then he has the political problem of he made commitments on fisheries to the UK”.
He adds that the UK’s fishing grounds are one of the main sticking points in the Brexit Trade deal talks, commenting “Compromise has to be found and my view always has been substantial compensation for UK fishermen and a certain amount, whether it’s Irish fishermen, French fishermen or Spanish fishermen, and get a happy medium somewhere in the middle that the UK gains more of its fisheries but if they upset the whole deal, and there’s six or seven countries, the UK’s going to be the hardest hit, Ireland probably the second hardest then you’re talking the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Denmark, all whom will take huge hits”.
