Michelle O’Neill backs NI Protocol, despite growing problems at Irish Sea border it created

The deputy first minister has firmly backed the Northern Ireland Protocol which creates the Irish Sea border, despite the growing evidence of the problems that border is creating.
Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’NeillSinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill
Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill

Speaking yesterday in the Assembly, on the day that the News Letter revealed how farcical sea border rules ban plants with a few particles of British soil from coming to Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill stressed her continued opposition to Brexit, but backed the protocol as the best form of Brexit.

Questioned by DUP MLA David Hilditch, she said: “The protocol gives us protections that we were not afforded throughout the whole of the Brexit debate. Our job as an Executive is to ensure the rigorous implementation of the protocol, and we will continue to work with the Irish and British Governments and the EU side on any issues that we see as problematic.”

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Yesterday the News Letter reported how one of Northern Ireland’s largest garden centres, Hillmount, is “on the brink of collapse” as it struggles to deal with the border.

Owner Robin Mercer said that the government was now pushing GB plant growers towards using environmentally-damaging peat because it is still lawful to ‘import’ plants from GB if they are in peat – but illegal if they contain soil or a peat-free bark-based compost.

Writing in today’s News Letter, TUV leader Jim Allister said that “intolerable burdens are being placed on our garden centres due to the iniquitous protocol”.

He said: “On 8 December 2020 Gordon Lyons, DUP Junior Minister, on behalf of the DUP DAERA minister, Edwin Poots, brought before the Assembly and proposed ‘The Plant Health and Diseases of Animals (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations (NI) 2020’.

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“It is these Regulations which adopted into the law of Northern Ireland the EU Directive 2000/29/EC which contains the absurd ban on importing soil, and thus roses, azaleas, etc potted up in soil, into the EU single market. The DUP proposed regulations at Article 2 implementing Section 41 of Annex 2 of the Protocol, which expressly details Directive 2000/29/EC and Regulation EU 2016/2031...I spoke in the debate and warned of their folly, but they knew best and sheep-like voted to enslave us in EU laws which are now strangling our garden centres and others. Only Jim Wells and I voted against this madness.”

l Jim Allister, page 18

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