Ms Una Boyd:

I agree that it is very telling that in order to prevent Ms DeSouza having her husband live with her in the UK, the Home Office has taken this stance where it has dragged a family through the courts at the expense of the public purse, all to argue that it does not have to respect its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement. At the end of the day, this came down to an immigration matter.

As was said, Brexit has really taken this beyond that. We are now seeing how this policy alone will cause huge issues. We have Northern Irish-born Irish citizens not able to access the EU settlement scheme, and there is no guarantee of how they will be able to legally enforce and protect their EU rights after Brexit. We have seen the massive flaws and gaps in the common travel area exposed through this. It has certainly gone beyond one family, and Ms DeSouza trying to have her husband live with her in the UK.

We are now in a position where the UK Government has made its stance very clear. We know some of what we are facing with Brexit, and we need to be able to act now to pre-empt that, to protect those rights and to ensure that, going forward, no one ends up in a similar position.