A hooded crow scurries along the low tide line here at Rosslare Strand on a cold clear February morning. The black and grey bird is in the company of other feathered visitors from Northern Europe and further afield who spend the winter here in Ireland — Arctic terns flittering through the sand, beached shells and seaweed.
Just off shore, a cormorant disappears under the wintry waves in search of a fish, reappearing about 15 metres away. Over the horizon, there are storm clouds gathering — winter storm Erik will die soon, Irish forecasters issued orange alerts for the heavy rain and driving gales it will bring. And in Rosslare Harbour — the Europort — past where the long strand with its birds and broken shells end, the afternoon Stena Line ferry ship, ending its nearly four-hour voyage from Pembroke in Wales across the Irish Sea, is slowly turning her stern to meet the pier before disgorging its passengers, cars, trucks and trailers — to reload and make the return trip some hours later. It will be heading out just as Storm Erik hits.
This port, on the southeast corner of Ireland, is the closest commercial harbour to continental Europe, the second-busiest port in the Republic of Ireland — and in four weeks’ time from today, will be on the front line of a new reality between a European Union of 27 member states, and the United Kingdom on the first day of its selected course of life outside the political, social and economic trading bloc.
Here, in Rosslare, where ferry services also link Ireland with the French port of Cherbourg 18 hours away over the sea around Land’s End, the southern-most tip of England, this is the face of the jilted spouse cast aside by the UK’s divorce after 45 marriage to the EU.
And no one knows what this month — never mind the years to follow — will bring from Brexit.
And with four weeks to go before Brexit official happens — at 11:01 pm on March 29, no one knows whether there will be a deal, allowing for an orderly withdrawal, or a no deal Brexit, meaning the overnight introduction of border, customs and other regulatory checks on everything that moves from this port, from Dublin, about 160 km to the north further up the east coast of Ireland, or from any of the hundred or so ports that will handle the tens of thousands of lorries and containers that up to Brexit Day moved freely across all 28 national borders that make the EU, plus other nations such as Andorra, Lichtenstein, Norway and Iceland that are part of the wider European Economic Area — the so-called customs union.
