Dr. Anthony Soares:

I thank the Deputy for his question.

I will touch briefly on the Deputy’s comment about his wariness in relying on the British government as an interlocutor. The only thing I would say in response to that is that in respect of the protocol, the withdrawal agreement, the trade and co-operation agreement and the structures that are created under that trade and co-operation agreement, the prime interlocutors in those agreements are the UK Government and the European Commission. They are the two parties to those agreements and they are responsible overall for the operation of the agreements and their various mechanisms. We have to work within that context. It was the context that was given to us and is the context in which we have to work.

In terms of the lack of Northern Ireland representation, I will briefly refer to, for example, the trade and co-operation agreement and again to the civil society engagement with political representatives. A civil society forum has been established under the trade and co-operation agreement, which is between the UK and the European Union in respect of civic society and it includes business, trade unions etc. I will briefly note that whereas there might be some concerns that the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland is primarily focused on the North-South relations, there are some concerns as to where the east-west relations fit into the agreement. The structures created under the trade and co-operation agreement perhaps offer opportunities to redress some of that east-west balance, in terms of getting those channels of dialogue on an east-west basis, as well as with the EU.

Briefly on the survey, I would first mention that the survey only closed on Thursday of last week. We are currently analysing the results in detail. They will be presented online live at 10 a.m. on Friday, 22 October. There will be a detailed presentation on the analysis of the results and what they signify. Before commenting on some of the results, I want to underline, stress and express my enormous gratitude to those organisations and representatives of local authorities who have responded to that survey. Their responses inform us as we engage with political representatives.

They allow us to speak to this committee and others and to the UK Government and others and in doing so to cite evidence of how civic society organisations and local authorities on the island of Ireland are experiencing or commenting on the ability to co-operate since 1 January 2021. We have just completed our third quarterly survey. We asked people to comment on the political, social, regulatory and material contexts in which North-South and east-west co-operation is taking place. We asked respondents to comment on how they see those contexts and whether those contexts are supportive of co-operation.

I will refer to the first quarterly survey results, just to give the committee an idea of the situation regarding the political context for North-South co-operation in March 2021. At that time, 60% of respondents indicated that the political context had deteriorated in respect of their ability to co-operate. The outcome improved slightly in the third quarter, with 36% of respondents saying that it had deteriorated. I stress that 36% of respondents are still saying that things are getting worse in respect of the political context being supportive of North-South co-operation. Some 54% of respondents said that it had stayed more or less the same. Therefore, we started at a very negative point in quarter one. A significant percentage of respondents still see things as deteriorating, but 54% now indicate that things have stayed more or less the same. I note that the survey closed on the Thursday and the comments by Lord Frost on Article 16 of the protocol were made on the Friday, so people were not influenced by that and could not take that into account.

To give an indication of the situation regarding the east-west political context, some 60% of respondents to our survey in quarter one had said that it had deteriorated. That outcome has now changed to 39.3% of respondents indicating that things have deteriorated in respect of the political context for east-west co-operation. That is a significant result, because it indicates that even compared to quarter two things have deteriorated in respect of the political context for co-operation. More detail will be given on the results of this survey, but I will pass over now to Mr. Stephen Douds, president of the Irish Association, to give some additional comments.