Finding a compromise to end the long-running impasse over the Northern Ireland Protocol “isn’t rocket science,” Bertie Ahern, the former Irish Taoiseach told UK lawmakers on Monday, adding that it was “beyond comprehension” it could not be resolved.
Giving evidence to UK lawmakers on the House of Commons Northern Ireland committee, Ahern pointed to the peace process that culminated in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
“When you think of the things that we resolved, we got the IRA to decommit their arms, we released prisoners … we reformed the old RUC to now a very competent international PSNI,” he said.
Now “we can’t find a way of working out how sausages and rashers” can move between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“It’s beyond comprehension, there has to be a solution that is unique to Northern Ireland,” he added.
Northern Ireland has been in political deadlock since March when the DUP, which supports Northern Ireland’s remaining part of the UK, walked out of the power-sharing government in Belfast.
It has since refused to form a government with Sinn Fein, which won May’s assembly elections until its concerns about the Northern Ireland protocol are met. Under the Good Friday Agreement, the two largest parties representing the national and unionist communities must be part of the government.
Ahern told MPs that while unionist concerns “cannot be railroaded” their demands, such as the scrapping of the abolition, “can’t be fully adhered to”.
(Benjamin Fox | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
