Ireland considering port checks on whole island in case of no-deal Brexit

Ireland is exploring the idea of checking live animals and animal products from Britain as they arrive at ports on the whole island of Ireland if there is a no-deal Brexit, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday.

"The kind of things that we're looking at and proposing, for example, is that the entire island of Ireland will be treated the same when it comes to agriculture or food and that any SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) checks would happen at the ports," Varadkar said in an interview with Ireland's Newstalk radio station.

"That would mean Britain accepting that Northern Ireland is being treated differently. The other things obviously are checks at the business level and random checks and controls, and we'll have to have a lot more of them anyway because of smuggling."

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