Professor David Phinnemore:

I thank the Senator for those questions. She said there were a few issues there, but there are 1,001 issues on which we could engage. On the future, the Senator talked about some mistakes being made in the past. One of them was to present the protocol as the best of both worlds. It was oversold. As soon as we began to look at it, we realised that there were various shortcomings in it. I referenced earlier that it avoids a physical hardening of the border, but we do not have free movement of services, capital and people. Issues are arising there. If the protocol is to serve the function of addressing the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland as it sets out to do, then there has to be flexibility around addressing some of the issues that are emerging. It is interesting that we used to hear rhetoric that this was about protecting the all-Ireland economy. That language disappeared from the protocol in the revised version, but if that is still part of the spirit in which it exists, what is being done to address the issues which the disruption of Brexit has caused in other areas?

I appreciate that we are at a difficult place in the UK-EU relationship and there is obviously resistance within Northern Ireland to differentiated treatment of Northern Ireland. However, if the narrative were to change, we have a framework here, where the UK has accepted some differentiated treatment for Northern Ireland. The EU has accepted that there can be special differentiated arrangements for a part of a non-member state in its relationships. What can be done there? If we think about trade, for example, one problem we know exporters in Northern Ireland are having is that they cannot access EU trade agreements. They can trade into the EU, but they are not covered by EU trade agreements with third countries. Can that be resolved so they can get that access? We talk about issues where the UK is possibly not necessarily pursuing what might be in the interest of Northern Ireland, for example, in the education space. Could we go back to ideas of how the protocol might be used to provide Northern Ireland particular access to EU programmes, because of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland? We have to get over the current problems but I think there is a framework there, which can potentially be used subject to ensuring that there is broad consensus within Northern Ireland on this.