DUP leader to press taoiseach over ‘flaws in NI Protocol arrangements’

Sir Jeffrey is due to meet Taoiseach Micheal Martin in Dublin on Friday.

The meeting comes a day after French president Emmanuel Macron was in Dublin for talks with the taoiseach.

Sir Jeffrey described Friday’s visit as part of a “series of engagements where I have challenged key stakeholders about the deep damage being caused to progress in Northern Ireland by the protocol”.

Unionists have expressed concern at the new trading arrangements distancing Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Loyalists are staging a series of ongoing protests against the protocol.

Speaking ahead of his meeting with Mr Martin, Sir Jeffrey said: “The economic border in the Irish Sea violates the Act of Union and has damaged political, economic and cultural stability within Northern Ireland.

“It cannot be sustained. Rather than protecting the 1998 Belfast Agreement and its successors, the protocol breaches those Agreements.

“Whilst the Prime Minister and Lord Frost have recognised the flaws of the protocol, tangible progress has been slower. The economic disruption of the UK Single Market continues. We continue to make our case in London.”

Sir Jeffrey said Dublin has also got a “key role to play”.

“It was the then taoiseach Leo Varadkar who insisted on such arrangements with his fellow EU leaders. I will be asking the taoiseach to recognise the flaws of the protocol and join with us in arguing in the corridors of power for change,” he said.

“It is time for Brussels to change its tune. It either changes course or it will have to take responsibility for Northern Ireland drifting backwards.

“I am in the business of moving Northern Ireland forward and building a shared and united community, but the protocol currently stands in the way of progress.”

Speaking earlier on Thursday, Sir Jeffrey’s DUP colleague Edwin Poots said party officers will be meeting within days to plan a “serious response” to the threat posed by the protocol.

“We are going into an autumn period where we have unfinished business, and particularly around the protocol, and what is being demanded off us from the European Union, and what is going to be demanded off us from the European Union because the checks are going to increase exponentially,” Mr Poots said.

“So all of these things are being taken into consideration. Our party officer team will be meeting later this month to make decisions as to what we do in the course of the autumn time. But what we are very clear about is that we can’t keep going on the way things are going.

“Things can’t stay the way that they are, so therefore the decisions that we make need to be very clear in what steps we take to ensure that that change happens.

“We will take decisions based on the evidence that we have, and our concerns have very significant as to the impact that the protocol and other things are having on Northern Ireland.

“Therefore, we will take those things very very seriously and we will respond in a very serious way,” he told BBC Radio’s Nolan Show.

When pressed to explain what he meant by a serious response, Mr Poots said: “It means we devise a response that is proportionate to the threat.

“We are meeting in the next number of days and it is for us to make that decision at that meeting and then to follow that through.

“We are very clear in our own minds that we can’t go on as is. It isn’t a satisfactory situation for the unionist population of Northern Ireland... or wider population of Northern Ireland. We need to have better circumstances as we leave 2021 and enter 2022.”

Speaking during a visit to Londonderry on Thursday, Sinn Fein president Mary-Lou McDonald said she welcomed engagement between Sir Jeffrey and the Ttaoiseach, but warned the protocol cannot be “wished away”.

She said: “The protocol isn’t going away, the protocol is necessary. Where there are challenges or difficulties, they can be figured out through the mechanism of the joint committee but any suggestion that you can wish Brexit away or the consequences of Brexit away, just isn’t living in the real world.”