Irish Official Concerned A Hard Brexit Will Lead To More Violence In Northern Ireland

“We didn’t want to see Brexit happening, but it wasn’t our decision,” Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the United States, said during an interview with Boston Public Radio on Monday. “From the Irish government’s point of view, the fundamental requirement is that there should be no possibility of a hard border on the island of Ireland anytime now or in the future.” Mulhall says that while he respects the decision of the citizens of the U.K. to leave the E.U., he wants to ensure that it’s done in an “orderly” fashion that does not inflame tensions between Northern Ireland and the U.K. and possibly re-ignite sectarian violence that plagued the region between the late 1960s and '90s. In April, Northern Ireland was rocked by the murder of journalist Lyra McKee, who was mistakenly killed by Irish nationalists in the aftermath of a violent raid by U.K. police of a suspected weapons cache in Londonderry.