Mr. Barry Andrews:

Yes, the whole idea is to try to avoid the infringement proceedings we are in. The unilateral decision to extend grace periods triggered the infringement proceedings. The UK has until 15 May to respond to that. The next step would be a reasoned opinion and it could end up before the European Court of Justice. However, there is a question as to whether the UK courts would enforce a ruling of the European Court of Justice under that mechanism so it is really untidy and it takes an awful long time to resolve those issues. There are specific mechanisms for dispute resolution within the trade and co-operation agreement that can lead to enforcement measures, up to and including suspension of parts of the agreement, up to and including ending the agreement completely so we are never more than a year away from a no-deal outcome because one of the parties can end the agreement with 12 months' notice. We want to avoid all of that and the very complicated institutional architecture that has been created in other trade and co-operation agreements is designed to avoid all of those potential pitfalls and outcomes.

As Deputy Richmond mentioned at the beginning, this is a very thin agreement. It is full of pitfalls from what has already been agreed. A range of issues remain to be agreed. My concern is that Northern Ireland could become collateral damage and that it could add to the uncertainty and instability in Northern Ireland. This is one of the things we are watching very closely. That was one of the main reasons that I was persuaded that ratification now was the right thing to do. We were all anxious that we would not ratify until there was full compliance with the implementation of the withdrawal agreement and the protocol but we were convinced that because of the dispute resolution mechanisms, which are far less unwieldy than what was on offer before that, it was worthwhile putting that in place. I hope that answers the Senator's question.