Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, I am speaking to businesses in Northern Ireland. We speak to them regularly, through online forums or when we have an opportunity to meet directly with businesses in Northern Ireland. Other colleagues do the same.

On my meetings with the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, I know her reasonably well from previous portfolios we would have been working on together. When I was the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, she was my counterpart in the UK. She is a very able minister. She has held many portfolios. She is someone who has a reputation for being a dealmaker and a can-do minister and she is now bringing that energy to this portfolio. We met in early January and spoke at length about the need for an agreement. I think she wants to find an agreement. Certainly, the European side does as well.

The issues around the protocol have been dragging on for far too long. They are contributing to a very polarised atmosphere in Northern Ireland, which is both unwelcome and unhelpful in the build-up to elections in May. Therefore, we all have an obligation to try to settle the outstanding issues. The point I made very clearly, to Liz Truss and publicly, is the EU is not in the space of renegotiating the protocol and writing a new one. However, it is in the space of trying to offer the maximum flexibility possible in terms of how the existing agreement, which is international law, can be implemented in a way that works for everybody. That is what Vice-President Šefčovič and his team have been trying to do with their proposals before Christmas, which were very substantial proposals in the effort to reduce checks on goods coming from GB into Northern Ireland and remaining there in sense of being purchased and consumed there. It is the belief of the EU that, by co-operation, we could reduce checks on those products from a sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, perspective by up to 80% and could halve the checks burden linked to customs. The EU has said it would like that to be the basis now for further discussion with respect to how that could be achieved.

I do not want to give an indication to the House that these issues will be easily resolved. There is still a big gap between both sides. Even though the conversations have been much more personal and warmer in many ways with Liz Truss now in charge on the British side, the issues themselves, in the sense of actual solutions on the table, are still very difficult. She certainly has not softened the UK Government's position on the key issues, even though there is much more personal engagement now in an effort to try to find a way forward.

As a final point, time is important here. We should be slow to be setting cliff-edge timelines and so on but elections are on the way. Between now and the end of February there is a key window to try to find a combination and agreement all sides could accept.

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