A post-Brexit proposal for agrifood has been dismissed as insufficient to replace the backstop by Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe ahead of a meeting between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar.
The British Prime Minister is due to meet the Taoiseach this morning and has said that Mr Johnson should not be expecting major progress on the Irish border talks.
Fine Gael TD Mr Donohoe told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "As of this point in time my understanding is that the detail of how this would work is yet to be fleshed out.
"But to any extent, to any point, this is something that only covers off a portion of the trade between the United Kingdom and on the island of Ireland and would not be a solution that would deal with all the other issues that we have to manage in terms of the flow of trade and also the protection of the Good Friday Agreement."
He also was not positive about the ability of a trusted trader scheme or new technology to prevent a hard border in Ireland.
"What I would say to those who are putting those ideas forward is we are yet to see examples of how they would work not only on our island but anywhere else in the world," he said.
"To be in a situation where we would have one part of our island inside the single market and the other outside the single market is a very, very testing challenge for alternative arrangements."
