Mr. Colin McGrath:

Thank you, Chair, for the three questions. It could take three or four hours to answer all of the points raised because the questions were so comprehensive.

There is always a difficulty in Northern Ireland that any issue we take instantly becomes green or orange and is one side of the community or the other. The motivation for some of the contributions is in the interests of people's culture and identity rather than the practicalities. Reference has been made on a number of occasions to a cool, calm, collected approach. The bottom line is that for the sale of a potato or pencil, it does not matter whether it is a unionist or nationalist buying it, it is about making sure that the potato or pencil can get from one place to another and not create additional costs for the business selling it. It is about keeping matters streamlined. Something like Brexit creates so many problems, but the solutions are always there. They need to be hard worked for, but they must be found and then delivered. When people have the solutions and they realise it is not having a massive detrimental impact on their business and trade practice they will settle and be happier. At that stage, they can start to look towards the opportunities mentioned by the Chair. Recognising that we are in a new dispensation may provide certain opportunities and we can go and embrace them. If some politicians constantly intertwine identity and culture with those issues, we will move into very dangerous territory. When people's culture or identity is threatened, they react in a particular way.

The bottom line is that we do not need to intertwine these issues whenever we are dealing with issues of trade.

There is a democratic deficit. Ms Anderson referred to it earlier. There was a potential for us to have some representation but that is not available. Where there can be a difficulty in that respect is with the changes that might take place in 12 months, two years or five years. Those changes may take place at EU level in Brussels or in conversations at a UK level in London. While the Dublin Government clearly has a voice at the table in Brussels, the way the landscape has been set up through various committee means we are not guaranteed that voice here through the negotiations and discussions that will take place from London. Our businesses and communities will be impacted by these decisions. We need to be able to bottom out how we make sure that our voice is heard.

I refer to the formation of any policies going forward, not just when a policy is implemented, and we are told what is going to happen and see the problems that happen. The potential under the consent mechanism in the protocol was mentioned. There is a fear that even assembly elections could be fought on whether the protocol should stay. In some quarters it may be to their benefit to make sure it never works because they can then use that opportunity to try to gain some sort of democratic benefit. We have to be very careful to keep the situation separate. It is a trade issue. Let us deal with it as a trade issue and make it work. If somebody has a cultural issue, let us address it as a cultural issue and try to persuade people on that front. When absolutely everything is tangled up we get ourselves tied up in knots and confused.

In terms of the best of both worlds going forward, there are some potential pitfalls because while the UK may be able to discuss trade deals with other countries on a technicality, we in the North should be allowed to benefit from that because of the connection to the UK. The protocol means that some of those products and trade impacts will not benefit the North. There will be the potential for some confab there. For example, if there is some form of trade deal with Argentina over meat or Brazil over coffee, those goods might be able to come into the UK, but the question under the protocol is whether they will be able to move into the North. There is a chance that we may not benefit from trade deals in the future and that may leave us with a deficit.

The very valid point was made that if these decisions are to be taken in two, four or six years' time, now is the time to do the planning. We saw what happened in the negotiations when a decision was eventually taken on Christmas Eve which gave businesses seven days to prepare for what was coming. That is no use to businesses. They need binoculars to be able to look a year or two ahead in order to get their systems in place. Therefore, it is incumbent on everyone, when they look at problems and issues in the future, that we start to plan for those changes today.