Northern Ireland Protocol is one of the factors in the cost of living crisis that we can control

Every household and business in Northern Ireland will pay more for a wide range of goods because of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Most people will have noticed the change already.

For those interested in delving into details the Department for Infrastructure committee meeting on March 16 2022 can be found on the internet.

In the current run up to the May election it appears the main political supporters of implementation of the protocol, ie Alliance, SDLP, and Sinn Fein do not want to talk about it on the basis that they want to focus on the urgent matters such as the cost-of-living crunch.

This misses the important point that the protocol is already contributing to the cost-of-living crunch in Northern Ireland.

The other factors such as the pandemic and war in Ukraine are outside local Northern Ireland political party control, but the cost increases due to the protocol are well within their sphere of influence to mitigate.

It would therefore seem logical that constructive discussion of the NI Protocol from an economic perspective is an urgent matter in order to help ease the cost-of-living hikes that we all face.

James Martin, Dromore, Co Down