BELFAST: Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said in Belfast on Friday that his government wants to be "building bridges not borders" with Northern Ireland as he reiterated his opposition to an economic border after Brexit.
"Brexit seriously risks driving a wedge between Northern Ireland and Ireland, between Britain and Ireland," Varadkar warned, in his first visit to the British province since taking office in June.
"And I cannot imagine who benefits from that."
Cross-border infrastructure projects such as roads were made possible due to the current free movement of goods and people, he said.
"That's our vision for the future: building bridges, not borders," he said.
Varadkar reiterated a preference for Britain to remain part of the EU, and failing that, for it to stay in the European single market to maintain the current free trade arrangements between Ireland and the UK.
Another way to smooth Britain's departure would be to establish an EU-UK customs union, he said.
Noting that a deal of this kind existed with Turkey, he said, "Surely we can have one with the United Kingdom."
In a speech at Queen's University Belfast, he said the alternative could mean a return of customs posts, "a brutal physical manifestation of historic divisions and political failure."
"Back then, south of the border was a very different place, a very different country to what it is today -- confessional, inward-looking and under-developed by Western European standards," he said.
"A place of bloodshed and violence, of checkpoints. A barrier to trade, prosperity and peace."
But he warned "the clock is ticking" to reach an agreement, as Britain began the two-year process of leaving the bloc in March.
- 'Challenge of our lifetime' -
The issue of the Irish border -- the only land border Britain will have with the EU after Brexit -- is a top priority in the negotiations between Brussels and London, which began in June.
There are fears the return of a "hard" border would disrupt the fragile peace in Northern Ireland, which was plagued by decades of unrest until a 1998 peace deal.
Varadkar described Brexit as "the challenge of our generation", saying: "Every single aspect of life in Northern Ireland could be affected by the outcome."
The Irish premier is meeting the leaders of the main Northern Irish parties during his two-day visit to Belfast, including Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
It will be their first meeting since Varadkar triggered a storm of DUP criticism last week by urging the party to clarify its position on the border issue.
"We're not going to be helping them to design some sort of border that we don't believe should exist in the first place," he said then.
His comments, which also expressed the hope of a U-turn over Brexit, provoked a furious reaction from the DUP, the only main party in Northern Ireland to support leaving the EU in last year's referendum.
"He may be hopeful but that is disrespecting the will of the British people -- Brexit is going to happen, we are leaving the European Union," Foster said.
Varadkar also called Friday for the immediate restoration of local government in Northern Ireland, which has been suspended since power-sharing collapsed earlier this year amid bitter divisions between the pro-British DUP and Irish nationalist Sinn Fein.