Background: Huge gulf in perception over NI protocol

Jim Allister does not mince his words. "Our trade is being strangled, our east-west relationships have been emasculated, our consumers are being starved of supplies," the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader claimed in the North's Assembly earlier this week.

“If ever there was a wake-up call to recognise the malevolent and iniquitous intent of the protocol, this is it.”

The attitude of Sinn Féin MLA John O’Dowd could not have been more different: “No one is starving... the economy has not been strangled as a result of the protocol. Those are all myths, they’re mistruths, and they’re provocative... Whatever outstanding issues there are around the protocol can be resolved.”

Not for the first time in Northern Ireland, there is quite a gulf between the two interpretations, to adapt the old adage. The truth about the impact of the Northern Ireland protocol lies somewhere in the middle.

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The initial fear, of long delays at the North’s ports, in the main did not transpire. Where issues have arisen it has been largely due to problems with the paperwork in Britain, where firms either did not realise this would be needed, or did not know how to fill forms out.

Harder to get

That aside, some products have been harder to get. Some UK firms suspended the delivery of goods purchased online to the North and/or the EU, and Marks & Spencer withdrew about 300 products because the customs processes in shipping them across the Irish Sea were so complicated.

While many of these businesses have since “come back online”, says Aodhán Connolly of Retail NI, others are still trying to work out the additional requirements, and there are concerns in the North that some may decide to simply abandon this relatively small market.

Another problem was groupage, where mixed loads from different manufacturers are shipped together on a single trailer, which again caused delays and left haulage firms in the North shipping back empty containers, at significant cost. The hope is that new guidance issued by the UK government last week has remedied this.

The pattern is typical: as each issue arises, workarounds and solutions are sought. Prominent examples include additional VAT on second-hand cars – which the industry in the North warned had the potential to wipe it out – and tariffs on steel, as well as the highly symbolic row over the movement of the British military to Northern Ireland.

Yet for every issue that is solved, those outstanding appear to multiply. There is also the question of items such as seeds, seed potatoes, soil and some plants, which can no longer be imported from Britain.

For Robin Mercer, the owner of Hillmount Garden Centre in Belfast, the impact has been catastrophic. "Like many others, we're on the brink of collapse through no fault of our own."

‘Grace periods’

Stringent rules on the movement of pet and guide dogs from Britain to the North have been temporarily suspended until July 1st. “Grace periods” are also in force to ease the shipment of food to supermarkets and wholesalers, and the delivery of parcels, though much of the concern in the industry has shifted to the “cliff edge” when those grace periods expire.

As for the much-publicised images of empty supermarket shelves, according to Connolly shortages only ever affected several hundred items out of 40,000-50,000 that might be stocked in a large supermarket.

Yet such pictures are potent. As each difficulty has arisen, it has added to unionist fears that the greatest consequence of the protocol has been to diminish their place in the union.

As has been starkly illustrated in recent days, these practical problems around the operation of the protocol in the North are also political and constitutional ones. Practical solutions would go a long way to defusing those concerns.