Professor David Phinnemore:

I will be very brief. In addition to what Professor Hayward said there, the issue of trust is of great importance here. As an example, I will quote from the polling evidence, where we have asked this question over the five or six polls on the extent to which we trust various actors to look after Northern Ireland’s interest regarding the protocol. On the EU and the Irish Government, 47% and 45% of those polled have trust. The most remarkable figure relates to that trust in the UK Government. The latest polling indicates that 7% of our respondents either trust the UK Government or trust it a great deal to look after the interests of Northern Ireland in the protocol. That is the highest figure across the six polls. This lack of trust is a very worrying situation. One can appreciate that there may be certain sectors of society in Northern Ireland who would not trust the UK Government but the fact that this figure includes unionists suggests there is a major issue there for the UK Government to address.

My second point is that part of the reason we have such a lack of trust is that expectations have simply not been managed in this Brexit process. There has not been honesty around the choices or the consequences of those choices. This goes back to the point I made right at the beginning. If you are going to develop trust then there needs to be much greater honesty on the part of the principals in this process, and I am looking primarily at politicians and Ministers. Trust and honesty are very important in this and we need to address those.