Ms Michelle Gildernew:

I thank Mr. Clancy and Mr. O'Kane for their comprehensive contribution to the meeting. I offer my congratulations to Mr. O'Kane on his elevation. We knew him before he was famous. He has done great work on the cross-Border coalition. That issue has been extremely worrying for us all. The conversation has moved. Our guests referred to economic inactivity. Back in the days before the Tories got into power, when the economy was doing really well but we did not fully appreciate just how well it was doing, in my constituency, and particularly in the south Tyrone end of the constituency where there is a very strong engineering base, economic inactivity was zero. Anybody who was able to work was working but we still could not get enough staff. Since then, we have had Brexit and all the challenges that has thrown up. From the moment the decision was taken to go ahead and have the referendum, people voted with their feet and went home to Poland or Lithuania for Christmas and did not come back. We have lost a significant chunk of economically active people who wanted to live and work here and make this their home. Brexit has been extremely difficult in my constituency, especially in the Dungannon area. Manufacturing, meat processing and all of that have been really badly hit. There is no firm that is not now recruiting on an ongoing full-time basis.

There are issues relating to the cost of keeping businesses running. I received a letter today from a very high-profile company in Fermanagh in respect of issues around CO2 availability, the cost of energy and all the other issues with which it is dealing and the difficulty it has keeping the lights on. We have a worrying time ahead of us. I appreciate what Mr. Clancy and Mr. O'Kane have said on the protocol.

I refer to my constituency and the range of issues affecting it. Like Deputy Conway-Walsh and others, I am not fixated on the Belfast-Derry-Dublin axis. It is very important that every boat rises with an economic tide. We in the Border community feel every challenge and difficulty first and we are the last to recover from them. There have been things that have given us great hope. We started the conversation by speaking about the medical school in the north west. It has the ability to be transformative in terms of delivering primary, secondary and tertiary care in my area. There is much for us to be hopeful about, but there are still significant challenges. There are infrastructural challenges, such as the fact that there is no motorway in County Fermanagh. The county does not have even five miles of dual carriageway.

It is a county that does not have any rail connectivity. We have issues with the high cost of energy and how far away we are from economic hubs.

We face extremely challenging times and I would like to draw from the witnesses how important they see the protocol in this with everything else that is going on. Is it still as essential as it was? I noted with disappointment that John Kyle resigned today. He had an alternative view of the protocol from most unionist politicians. I would love to hear the witnesses' point of view on the necessity for maintaining the protocol and ensuring those issues we have do not become insurmountable.