Professor Imelda Maher:

My understanding is that the consent issue became critical to the protocol and that this was the solution. It was better to have cross-party agreement than single party determination of continuation or otherwise. I would not want to be a business trying to operate under this mechanism because there may only be four years, but hopefully eight years, of certainty with which to work. Businesses are used to change but it seems particularly demanding to have change that must be thought about every four years. This issue does go to legitimacy. As Deputy Chambers was speaking, I immediately thought that we would then have all of the other governance structures that apply under the Good Friday Agreement.