Mr. Stephen Kelly:

It is a constant surprise to many in the North.

No one in the business community welcomed the protocol, or the Windsor Framework. People think we have done so but we have not because it is full of problems, challenges, costs, frictions and issues.

We welcomed the fact that there was agreement between the UK and the EU, both in 2019 and earlier this year. Why did we do that? We did so because the relationship is more important than anything else. Where you have a decent relationship, you can resolve issues and problems. We had found ourselves in a position where both sides were staring down the barrel of each other, perhaps justifiably on both sides. The UK was threatening to unilaterally legislate for some of the things we now have in place in the Windsor Framework. The EU was also threatening legal action if the UK did not adhere to its international treaty obligations. The clue is in the name - "framework". The framework is not the final plan but it is the basis from which to build out. When designing a town there is a framework. There will be parks here, houses there and schools over there but you get into the detail of what they will look like much later, when the planning is being done.

When Prime Minister Sunak and President von der Leyen came to an agreement it created a moment of massive decompression in that relationship. The business community felt that as well because we were in the middle of all of that. That is critically important. We have seen this work already. There were issues with certain categories of steel product coming into Northern Ireland on which 25% EU tariff was to have been applied. In the Windsor Framework, it was agreed there would be two categories, category 7 and category 17, but since then another five categories have been agreed, with no fanfare or aggravation and with nobody jumping up and down and threatening to legislate. The parties just got on with it and did boring work because there is a framework and relationship in place to get stuff done.

We have had a lot of politics in the North for a long time. When I asked my members what they are looking forward to in 2024, which I did because the newspapers always ask me to do so, the first response I got was that they want it to be boring. It has been too exciting, politically, in recent years. Can we not just have a boring year for a change and get on with stuff? We would all welcome that.