Ray Bassett
Ray Bassett is a former Irish diplomat. Bassett was born in Dublin and attended O'Connell School and Trinity College Dublin. At the latter, he earned a PhD in biochemistry in 1979. He served as an ambassador from Ireland to Canada, Jamaica, and the Bahamas and joint Secretary to the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference in Belfast before retiring in October 2016. He is the senior fellow for EU affairs at the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange. He is also the author of "Brexit: Options for the Border" and "Brexit and the Border". In 2020 Bassett published a book, "Ireland and the EU Post Brexit", which was sharply critical of Ireland's former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Bassett noted that Varadkar 'had done everything in his power to thwart the democratic outcome in the UK [the Brexit vote in 2016]...The gamble failed and Ireland is now facing a very difficult situation...Opposing a fair deal for the UK was never in Ireland's interests. It was a huge blunder.'
Q7071717
O'Connell School
ORG
Q258464
Trinity College Dublin
LOC
Q22890
Ireland
Concept
Q16
Canada
LOC
Q766
Jamaica
LOC
Q778
Bahamas
LOC
Q4971473
British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference
ORG
Q10686
Belfast
LOC
Q458
EU
ORG
Q1431365
Policy Exchange
ORG
Q1728820
Leo Varadkar
PER
Q90845759
Ray Bassett
PER
1979-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1979
DATE
2016-10-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
October 2016
DATE
2020-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
2020
DATE
2016-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
2016
DATE
headquarters location