Professor Imelda Maher:

The Chairman is correct in stating that we are now much closer to where we were 18 months ago before the February arrangement and the backstop emerged. The original thinking was that Northern Ireland is special. People may remember the letter sent by Arlene Foster and the late Martin McGuinness within days of the referendum result stating that Northern Ireland is special and that people should not forget that. That coloured the way the Northern Ireland issue was initially viewed. As we said, nobody thought about the land border in Northern Ireland. I am always struck by the fact that it is called the Irish land border when it is in fact a British land border. The ownership was slow in coming. As the committee knows, the idea was that everything in the UK had to be kept together and the union had to be protected. We moved into a much more complex arrangement whereby there would be a frictionless border, but a border nonetheless. That is where we talked about the backstop idea. The big shift has been the realisation that there is no such thing as a frictionless border. A border is not just physical, something people have come to appreciate. We have an invisible border now and that has been put back in. On the face of it, that is the biggest difference. The word "border" is not about physicality, it is actually about form-filling. It concerns rent and work agreements. If I examine a PhD in the UK, I have to bring my passport with me. The nature of the Border is much more complicated and that complexity is being exploited in order to preserve the non-physical border North and South. We are much closer to plan A, even though we are on plan C. The effect is that we will keep an invisible border.