Letter: I backed the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, now to save its ideals I vote for those who will not participate in Stormont

The demise of the 1998 deal

April 10 1998 was a calm, dry day as I recall.

Having witnessed the TV announcement of agreement I felt the need to walk out on the street. My neighbours had the same idea, including an emotional republican 'liaison officer' (I lived on the nationalist side of a Belfast interface.)

This 'hand of history' thing seemed like it might mean something. Alas, the agreement began to lose its value in 2019 when it became clear that Northern Ireland would not leave the EU along with the rest of the UK.

To understand why the imposition of the Northern Ireland Protocol is so offensive try buying lettuce seeds from an English supplier on Amazon. You'll be met with the statement “This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. Please choose a different delivery location.”

Try arranging your own delivery of goods from Great Britain suppliers and you'll wade into a quagmire of bureaucracy – alongside every Northern Ireland business that trades with Great Britain suppliers:

XROI number, Commodity code tariff, GMR records, GVMS, CDS, Simplified frontier declaration, EORI number, CDS40066, Supplementary declaration, UKTS, NIREM, Standard import value, ECMS, DDA, NICTA, ... All to bring a lorry across the North Channel.

Only Brussels bureaucrats colluding with mandarins in Dublin and London could concoct such an administrative nonsense.

Would Peter in Exeter accept protocol bureaucracy to buy a pallet of insulation boards from Halifax? Would Deaglan in Cavan put up with protocol procedures to ship light fittings from Cork?

The recent legal excursion by prominent unionists though the High, Appeal, and Supreme courts has confirmed the Good Friday Agreement's (GFA) demise. If my status as a British citizen is being subjugated to the NI Protocol then how can I be equal with my Irish fellow citizens? So much for the GFA's ‘British, Irish, or both’. It's Irish only now.

Back in '98 I took time out to work for the 'Yes' campaign. What a strange irony that 25 years later the only means I have to try to protect the ideals espoused in the GFA is to vote for those who guarantee not to participate in a Stormont assembly so long as any part of this protocol persists.

John Hoey, Co Antrim