Bombardier Plant Chief in Belfast Backs Theresa May's Brexit Plan

(Bloomberg) -- The chief of Northern Ireland’s biggest manufacturer backed Theresa May’s Brexit plan, providing a boost for the embattled premier from a part of the U.K. where opposition to the deal with the European Union could derail the accord.

Michael Ryan, the head of Bombardier Inc.’s Belfast plane plant, said in an interview Wednesday that the so-called backstop laid out in the deal is a workable arrangement that he could live with if necessary, and infinitely preferable to a no-deal split.

“It would not be difficult at a Northern Ireland business level,” the executive said in London. “That’s not to understate the sovereignty concerns. But speaking as a businessman and someone who wants to continue to run a business here, it’s the least burdensome option.”

Ryan lent his backing a day after May visited Belfast to drum up support for the deal, which her Democratic Unionist Party allies say imperils Northern Ireland’s place in the U.K. by potentially tying the region to EU rules indefinitely, with checks that wouldn’t apply elsewhere in the country.

Ryan said those measures, which already apply in areas such as livestock transfers, would have no great impact.

“Given that there are already agricultural checks which happen invisibly and hardly anyone knew about, moving aircraft parts around should be relatively straightforward,” he said. “It would mean more admin and documentation, but it would be much less disruptive to our business than the alternative.”

The Bombardier plant imports 25 percent of its components from the rest of the U.K. and 40 percent from the EU. The site employs almost 4,000 people and accounts for about 10 percent of Northern Ireland’s manufacturing exports.

To help avoid the return of checkpoints on the Irish border, May’s deal suggests the entire U.K. will remain in a customs union with the EU until a better solution is found.

But Northern Ireland will also keep many of the EU’s rules -- and that means added checks on goods arriving from Britain. Both the U.K. and EU say they want to avoid the backstop ever being triggered. So far that hasn’t been enough to reassure the DUP, which has said companies don’t fully grasp the implications of the deal.

“Our one red line” is that Northern Ireland shouldn’t be treated differently from the rest of the U.K., DUP leader Arlene Foster said in an interview with the BBC on Thursday, adding the party is speaking to others about finding a “better” deal.

May told a committee of senior members of parliament on Thursday that lawmakers voting down her Brexit deal on Dec. 11 isn’t risk free. “The timetable is such that some people would need to take some practical steps in relation to planning for no deal” if the government loses the vote, she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Jasper in London at cjasper@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net, Dara Doyle

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