Mr. Tony Connelly:

They are all friends and family on my twitter account, just to make that point.

There is definitely momentum towards an agreement on the Northern Ireland protocol. The question is "when" rather than "if" at this point. A lot of intense technical work has been done in the past few months and the Deputy is correct that, much to my frustration at times, this is being kept secret or tight by the Commission. The briefings to member states that used to take place are not happening so it is quite hard to get information. My understanding is that an outline of an agreement has been more or less drawn up and it is now up to Rishi Sunak to decide whether he is prepared to endorse this agreement and sell it to his party and to the DUP.

The trick is that the agreement will essentially proclaim an overall outcome, namely that there will be a reduced number of checks and controls on goods entering Northern Ireland, but the hard technical work will still have to be done by EU and UK officials and businesses in Northern Ireland on what data has to be uploaded when goods are shipped across the Irish Sea and how much and what kind of paperwork is required. Many of the parameters of this agreement are well-known. A category of trusted traders who qualify as such under various criteria is envisaged. The system will know they can be trusted to deliver what they say they will deliver and that their goods will not stay in Northern Ireland. As the Deputy mentioned, there is an ITC agreement under which EU officials can plug their laptops into one single system comprising a blend of five different His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, HMRC, and commercial databases. There is a drag and drop function to enable EU officials to look at what is coming across the Irish Sea in real time and identify unusual patterns over the period of a week, month or whatever. If patterns are noticed, a red flag can be raised and HMRC border force will be able to take action. A lorry can be pulled in. The principle is that instead of having routine checks, checks are carried out in response to a risk. Does that mean that there will not be any checks if there is no risk? We do not know that sort of detail. Clearly data from traders who are sending goods to Northern Ireland will be needed in order to be able to make that assessment. Information is needed for an IT system. How much data, how onerous it will be for traders and whether they will require a commodity code, which is a complicated and cumbersome piece of paperwork, will be decided.

The IT system being in place has opened the gates for an agreement. The EU can move in the direction of the UK towards this concept of risk. The UK position has always been that the EU's rigid regime on risk, which requires everything or a certain percentage of goods to be checked, was not needed. If a risk arises, that is when a response is needed. It could be argued that if a risk arises, it is too late. The system will work for customs as well as for agrifood sanitary and Phytosanitary, SPS, checks, which is a significant development and can calibrate the degree of required checks.

The question is whether this will be enough for Rishi Sunak to try to sell it to his backbenchers and to the DUP. We will have to wait and see. Rishi Sunak has a difficult budget in March. There could be a lot of unrest on his backbenches over tax cuts. He is seen to be in a fairly weak position. If he is going to make a deal with the EU, which I think he wants to, there is limited time to do that. We are talking about the next few weeks. That is where this will land. A lot more detailed work will have to follow the headline agreement on reducing routine checks on goods to zero. We will see.