Mr. Rory Montgomery:

A couple of the questions bear on ongoing parts of the negotiation which Mr. Connelly spoke about earlier. There is no way to get away from the European Court of Justice, ECJ, having the final role in interpreting the application of EU law. The protocol is not an ordinary trade agreement or even the EU-UK free trade agreement, where one can have a system of arbitration at the apex of the system. It is not necessary to have the ultimate recourse to the ECJ, where something happens which raises serious questions. It may well be. There are discussions about this - I do not know how it might be solved - whereby an additional layer might be put between the structures for dispute resolution and the ECJ and some sort of arbitration could be provided for. However, sooner or later, I do not see how one could get away from the ECJ. This is a neuralgic sovereignty point. The trouble is that with the DUP, which has not made much of this and especially with the European Research Group, ERG, and the Tories, there are practical issues which can be effectively 95% sorted out in the way Mr. Connelly was describing and then there are the ideological issues of principles involved. I just do not see how those can be gotten over.

I will add a footnote. Keir Starmer gave his clear support to Rishi Sunak. I remember back in 2019, when Theresa May was struggling to get her deal through, David Lidington and Keir Starmer had many exchanges. Simon Coveney was talking to them, individually, all the time. If it had been left to people's good will, it might have been possible to sort something out. Theresa May, however, knew that her exit would be hastened even further if she relied upon the Labour Party, and Jeremy Corbyn was never going to rescue the Tories from their own mess.

The question of a democratic deficit for Northern Ireland is an important point in the longer term. Katy Hayward, professor at Queen's University in Belfast, has raised this point. There are mechanisms in Brussels whereby non-EU countries in the EEA and Schengen arrangement, for that matter, are part of structures of consultation and involvement. It might seem a bit over-elaborate to institute such an arrangement specifically for Northern Ireland, but I wonder whether there is a way this could creatively be used as a model. I do not know whether this is being talked about. At the very least, it seems to be a potential flanking measure to be worked out in the future.

As far as the Government is concerned, it is interesting, because the Good Friday Agreement and the North-South Ministerial Council provisions talk about EU issues being discussed and the Government taking account. The basic problem is that I do not think the unionists would ever accept, in any formal way, that the Government was some kind of voice for Northern Ireland in the EU. Having said that, we are able to play our part. The chair, as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, would have been very much involved in the negotiations over the EU budget and financial framework. Part of that was the continuation of the PEACE programme.

Even though the great bulk of the PEACE programme money was going to Northern Ireland, for two years on the Committee of Permanent Representatives, COREPER, as we were discussing the future EU budget, I invariably mentioned PEACE. I remember Eamon Gilmore mentioning it to Herman Van Rompuy, who was the President of the European Council. I met Arlene Foster last week and the only previous occasion we had met each other was back in approximately 2010, when the Northern Ireland Executive, with the British, was looking for state aid approval for a large investment in Bombardier, the aircraft manufacturer in Belfast, which is now owned by Embraer. Behind the scenes, as best we could, we spoke in favour of this application. In fact, a dinner was organised in Brussels to celebrate the fact that they got it. I was invited, as were my colleagues from the permanent representation. In the glory days in the European Parliament, Ian Paisley and John Hume used to work together on agricultural matters, but to create a structure is quite difficult.