Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a robust negotiation. Lord Frost is a good and tough negotiator and good luck to him. The EU also has concerns that need to be protected. As Vice-President Šefovi said at this committee, its priorities are the integrity of the Single Market, not compromising it, protecting an all-island economy, protecting a peace process and ensuring there is no need for any physical border infrastructure to re-emerge on the island of Ireland. That is what the protocol is there for, and it does that job.

What we are now trying to do is to reduce the checks burden on east-west trade only, from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, which of course is the price of the protocol. Those are goods coming into the EU Single Market. I think Vice-President Šefovi has gone a long way to try to respond to the asks and frustrations of people in Northern Ireland on those issues.

The medicines issue has a solution that involves the EU changing its laws. The sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, checks burden can be reduced dramatically as indeed can the customs issue.

The other big question that continues to be asked by leaders in Northern Ireland is on the democratic deficit issues linked to the protocol. This impacts on Northern Ireland, but it does not have a say in the future application of the protocol apart from through joint committee structures and so on. Therefore, the Commission is willing to look at formalising more structures in terms of communication. That has to be supported by the British Government as well, if it wants to do it. That is where we are.