Brexit means Brexit and we're going to make a success of it.

We have got a cast iron assurance and a guarantee from the British government.

The particular problems around the Irish border are being used politically to try to frustrate Brexit.

Northern Ireland must leave the European Union on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland would form part of our customs territory.

Hello and welcome to Brexit Republic, RTE's podcast on Brexit.

Happy Christmas and a happy new year from all of us.

I'm Colom O'Mongown, RTE's Deputy Foreign Editor in Dublin.

Now, although we're not back until January, we have something seasonal to tee up the coming year.

Policy Scotland at Glasgow University hosted the former UK ambassador to the European Union last month.

Sir Ivan Rogers served in that role from 2013 until after the Brexit referendum.

In January 2017, he resigned. Now, he's given

a number of lectures since its departure. We've podcasted one before one at Liverpool University

at the Heseltine Institute, but Policy Scotland at Glasgow University and Ivan Rogers himself

have kindly agreed to let us do so again. His theme in this lecture is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

and the lecture was recorded before the UK election but despite that he gave it on the assumption

that there would be a Tory victory. Now in it he looks ahead to the potential pitfalls in the coming

year in the talks between the European Union and the UK on their trading relationship.

And it's a good long look ahead from an informed perspective at what could be a pretty long year.

I had actually been hoping to talk about sort of technocrats and bureaucrats and technocracy

and political accountability. But given where we are politically in much the biggest

political crisis since the war and arguably a major constitutional crisis too, the only thing

...