FORMER Taoiseach John Bruton has likened Britain's exit from the EU to a lengthy and painful divorce.
Speaking in London Mr Bruton raised concerns about how Brexit negotiations will divert time and talent away from other important matters.
"The recent UK General Election result did not endorse Mrs May’s very specific plans for a hard Brexit," Mr Bruton said in relation to the current state of political upheaval in Britain and Northern Ireland following last week's general election result where Prime Minister Theresa May failed to secure a majority.
"The loss of support for the outgoing government in London, and in university towns, underlines thi," Mr Bruton added.
"It now looks as if the next government will be a coalition of some kind between the Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)."
Mr Bruton's comments come as the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said Britain could be running out of time to secure its EU ties.
In an interview with the Financial Times Mr Barnier said Britain risks crashing out of the EU in March 2019 without a deal on future relations.
"Next week, it will be three months after the sending of the Article 50 letter,” he said. “We haven’t negotiated, we haven’t progressed. Thus we must begin this negotiation. We are ready as soon as the UK itself is ready.”
As DUP leader Arlene Foster arrived in Westminster to hammer out details of a possible Tory deal, Mr Bruton called on ministers in Stormont to 'go back to work'.
"The two big parties in Northern Ireland have taken opposite sides on Brexit," he said. "They have revived the issue of territorial sovereignty.
"Both these parties seems to be more comfortable agitating about their irreconcilable demands on territorial sovereignty, than engaging in the day-to-day drudgery of ministerial responsibility in a power sharing administration, in a time of limited budgets.
"It is time for ministers in Stormont to go back to work."
Mr Bruton said there was a danger that Brexit negotiations - which he likened to a bitter divorce - would take precendence over power-sharing negotiations in Northern Ireland.
"In the past, Prime Ministers and retired statespersons could fly in to Belfast, to provide cover for a new compromise between the parties that allowed them to get back to work," he said.
"As Brexit will absorb so much of everyone’s time in coming years, the scope for this sort of high profile counselling will be less. Reality therapy may be needed."
On a potential DUP/Conservative deal, he said agriculture was the subject to watch.
"Given the commercial interest many Democratic Unionist supporters have in trade across the border in Ireland, the Conservative Party may have to drop its insistence on leaving the EU Customs Union, to avoid the necessity of extensive and time consuming checking of goods crossing the border," he said.
He added: “The Brexit process will not be like a member leaving a club of which he or she no longer wishes to be a member, which is an easy enough process, once the bar bill has been settled.
"It will be much more like a divorce between a couple, who have lived together for years, have several small dependent children, a mortgage, and a small business they had been running together.
"Not only have past bills to be settled, but future liabilities have to be anticipated, decisions made about the running of the business, and rights and responsibilities in respect of the children, agreed.
"It would be naive to think that the divorce between the UK, and the other EU countries, including Ireland, will not leave scars. I hope that is all they will be, scars, that will gradually become less visible.”
Mr Bruton was in Britain for the annual Henry Grattan lecture in association with Trinity College Dublin and hosted at the Irish Embassy in London.
On the political consequences of Britain leaving the EU, he said: "The UK government has decided to go further than the requirements of the referendum decision of 23 June 2016, and to leave the Customs Union, and the European Economic Area as well, and to reject any jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, adds to the difficulties.
"Now that the UK General Election has failed to endorse the Prime Ministers vision of a hard Brexit, the parties who will be forming or supporting a new government here have the opportunity to reopen some of the question like the Customs Union and acceptance of ECJ jurisdiction in certain areas.
"I hope that these are thoroughly looked at again, in an open minded way in the inter party negotiations and the options properly debated," he said.
"I hope the people of the UK will now have the sort of honest detailed, sector by sector, debate on what Brexit might mean, a debate that they so markedly failed to have during the general election campaign."
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