Mr. Jonathan Powell:

I should preface my contribution by saying I am not a lawyer or an expert. However, it appears that what is happening is an attempt to try to redefine consent and the idea of cross-community consensus and cross-community agreement. It is dangerous to try to bleed these things so they mean something other than they meant in the Good Friday Agreement. Changing the meaning of terms could undermine the whole basis of the agreement. What is required by the Good Friday Agreement is consent to change the status of Northern Ireland. That is not cross-community consent; it is consent of the majority. According to opinion polls, there is no majority to change the status of Northern Ireland now. I do not know when that majority might ever exist but it does not exist now. It does not require a majority of both communities; it requires a majority of the population.

As I understand the protocol, change also requires the consent of a majority in the Northern Ireland Assembly, not a cross-community majority. That is trying to shift this issue to take a cross-community angle. As I say, I am not an expert and I may be misstating the situation but this is my understanding. To play with the words involved, as the current UK Government is doing, is dangerous. The cross-community aspect has always been important and was a crucial element of the Good Friday Agreement. What we needed after 90-odd years of Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland was to find a way where there could be proper power-sharing. We could not accept one community lording it over the other the entire time. There had to be an ability for both communities to have a share. Interestingly, that was then to protect the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, and if it is now used to protect a Protestant and unionist minority, which may be the case when we see the next census and which has happened politically, we should respect it equally. Starting to monkey around with those terms and how they are applied is dangerous, even if one is only doing it rhetorically, as the British Government has been doing.

There is a longer-term question that will need to be discussed, in that power-sharing may not be the right answer for Northern Ireland indefinitely. Power-sharing in Bosnia, for example, has been destructive in the long term because there can be no political change. It would be dangerous to start changing power-sharing at this stage in Northern Ireland's existence, given the sensitivity involved. The Alliance Party has some very good points on that issue and ways need to be found to accommodate them. However, I do not think it would be wise to undermine the Good Friday Agreement in respect of consent and cross-community agreement at this stage when everything is being stirred up by Brexit and the introduction of the protocol.

That is not a very satisfactory answer. I worry when the current British Prime Minister is taking these terms and trying to adapt them to what he wants politically rather than accepting what was actually stated in the agreement.