 Good afternoon all, my name is Dahio Kallig, I'm chair of the UK group in the Institute and I want to welcome you to this session with the Alliance Party. This is one of a number of webinars we've held with the parties in Northern Ireland to get their views on Brexit and in particular on the Northern Ireland protocol. Regrettably, for personal reasons, Naomi Long can't be with us this afternoon, but I'm delighted to welcome the deputy leader of the Alliance Party, Dr Stephen Farrie, who is the MP for North Down. He has a lot of experience in international affairs, a lot of experience in politics in North Down. He was a member of one stage in the executive before it fell, and he took a very strong role indeed in against Brexit and was strongly in favour of remaining in the European Union, and he has been very active in Parliament and Westminster, not least of Northern Ireland questions, trying to ensure that the pro-remain voice is still heard in Westminster and that those politicians in Northern Ireland who are opposed to what's happening by the British government on the protocol, he takes a strong stand on that, and he's one of the few voices from Northern Ireland who takes that view. This webinar is on the record. Dr Farrie will talk for maybe 20, maybe 25 minutes and then he will take questions. If you're asking a question and you have an affiliation, please let us know, and we will endeavour to have Dr Farrie answer as many questions as possible. We land at two o'clock. Dr Farrie, it's a great pleasure to welcome you to the institute and I hand it over to you. Well, thank you very much, chair, and good afternoon to all of our guests. First of all, I'll just apologise on two fronts. First for Naomi, who has had some very urgent difficult family developments this morning, so she's had to withdraw a short notice, so I'm stepping in at that short notice, so apologies for any ooms and errors as I'm sort of working my way through this from a standing start. And secondly, you may notice my voice is a little bit croaky and recovering from illness this week, so this is actually my first day back, and it's a non-COVID-19 illness, so other illnesses apparently are still available. So with that, I'll kick off. And I suppose in terms of approaching the protocol, close to the simplest thing to say at the outset is that we in the Alliance Party can be probably described as protocol pragmatists or protocol realists in the sense that we aren't particularly enthusiastic about the protocol, but we understand why it exists and why it is necessary and that we have to make the best of it. We certainly know that it brings many challenges for Northern Ireland and it's far from a perfect solution to the very particular challenges posed by Brexit, but it also provides some comparative opportunities to us as well, which we need to capitalise upon and hopefully we'll come to that in a moment. And I stress I say comparative because there's nothing compared to both the UK and Ireland being both part of the European Union, and in any situation where that was broken up, there's always going to be some degree of difficulty that's posed from that and an economic hit. This is essentially a situation where Northern Ireland is maybe in a better position, relatively speaking, to other parts of the UK, but not to the terms that it is still an economic challenge for us. That brings me to the very outset that just to briefly go through a little bit of history of this, but not to overly dwell on history, but to say obviously we approach this as a pro-European party. We've always been a pro-European, it's very much part of our DNA and that we see ourselves part of the wider European and global movement. In Northern Ireland terms, the last party is a cross-community party, so we don't take a particular stance on the constitutional question, but we will have members who have a broad range of different perspectives in that regard, but we are essentially founded around making Northern Ireland or this place, this region, wherever it will be in the future work and to build integration, promote reconciliation and to ensure people have opportunities and prosperity. So the European Union has been very important to Northern Ireland in a number of respects, obviously the economic opportunities like every other part of the European Union have been of crucial importance, but on a political level and almost in a constitutional sense as well, the European Union has been extraordinarily helpful and the fact that both the UK and Ireland were part of the European Union essentially allowed the Good Friday Agreement to proceed and to be successful in the sense that it allowed borders to essentially wither away and that provided a very important context to the Good Friday Agreement. A lot of people may accurately say that the European Union is barely referenced inside the document on the actual pages. It is very much in the background context to the peace process and to the agreement itself and in essence it has respected and reflected that Northern Ireland is still a divided society where a contested space in the sense that there's a overarching constitutional question and the only way which Northern Ireland can work is through sharing and interdependence. So Northern Ireland benefited from the three-stranded approach to the Good Friday Agreement, the internal power sharing, the North-South cooperation on the islands and the East-West collaboration inside the context of the UK but also including Ireland as well in a much broader framework and all three of those legs of the stew that stood in harmony with each other but it was that development of the single market and the further consolidation of the customs union that allowed borders to essentially disappear in that context and it allowed essentially what is the the the fund that the trade-off inside the agreement to bed down where Irish nationalism in the broader sense formally recognised Northern Ireland as an entity for the first time within the Good Friday Agreement but there was a very important quid pro quo in the sense that the Irish nationalist identity was recognised and that there was that freedom on the islands to to do many many things without really any inhibitation and that was of crucial importance to allowing things to develop. Obviously our peace process has been so we say 30 fraughts even with over the past 20 years even before we got to the context of Brexit through many difficulties around identity issues around preeds, flags, how we deal with the legacy of the past, various differences between the political parties over things like language rights but things did more or less stumble through in the main but it is a fair criticism to say that we've put a lot more in terms of building reconciliation and providing an integrated society so that the full potential of the Good Friday Agreement has not yet been fully realised along comes Brexit up until now obviously both the UK and Ireland moved in harmony in relation to the relationship with the European Union and even in terms of something like Schengen we're both staying out at the same time obviously both within the Single Market Customs Union the EU itself at the same time but Brexit itself was the great disruptor in all of this and the fundamental difficulty posed is that Brexit was trying to provide a very simplistic populist solution, a black and white solution into a society such as Northern Ireland that up until now has only really survived through various shades of grey and indeed some some constructive ambiguities and the notion that a Brexit, a particular a hard Brexit which obviously must entail some degree of an economic interface or a border if you want to call it that wouldn't cause disruption was always going to be misplaced and we've been wrestling with that conundrum ever since as to exactly where that line on the map was going to be drawn we would have much preferred a situation where there never needed to be any line on the map drawn anywhere in these islands or any hardening of any existing line on the map but that is the consequence of the decision around Brexit and that does bring some very profound political economic and social implications and may in turn provide some fairly serious constitutional implications as well and we've been wrestling with those problems ever since 2016 I mean our party initially was running a almost like a three-stranded approach in terms of a hierarchy of responses and our first preference was that we would reconsider Brexit in its entirety let the people of the UK take the opportunity to reconsider if they seriously did want to do Brexit particularly in light of some of the developing situations that we've seen since 2016 that never really got much traction unfortunately the second option was to for the whole UK to work closely aligned with the Singapore customs union again that was sadly rejected so we were in then to a special deal for for Northern Ireland whether it was called the backstop or the the data version of the protocol there was always going to be what I need for that special arrangement for Northern Ireland once all other options were essentially ruled out of off the table due to the decisions taken by the Conservative government and for for many years they're at their allies in the DUP so we approached the protocol in the sense that we didn't want it to happen but we recognize why it exists and why it needs to be there but in essence and in saying that we also recognize that if you had to make a choice not that we wanted to make a choice the only realistic and viable place where you could manage the interface in these islands was going to be down the RAC not across the land border you're talking essentially a choice between seven RNC crossings versus over 250 land crossings you're talking about a far greater volume of move a number of movements on the island compared to what happens across the RAC and in all circumstances the only place in which you could ever do the the SPS IQ food checks was going to be down the RAC anyway because the precedent had already been set in terms of the movement of farm vehicles and live animals previously anyway and there's no prospect of treating the island of Ireland as separate animal health zones in any event so that was probably the absolute clean assurance it's noticeable that they do something like shine or sing them who's one of the the so-called intellectual golf managers of Brexit even he recognizes that when it comes to SPS interface the only place that could happen is down the RAC so in terms of where we go from from here we essentially want to turn the protocol as much as possible from a solid line down the RAC into a dotted line with as few dots as we possibly can and in parallel we then want to see action taken to ensure that we fully capitalise upon the opportunities that are posed to us by by brexit um the or sorry by the protocol not the predator to correct yourself on that one um the probably the signature suggestion that we have made over the past 12 months and it's something we're going to renew over the coming weeks is that there should be a UK EU veterinary agreement we think that the the trade and cooperation agreement itself is obviously a zero tariff zero quota deal but in terms of non non-tariff barriers it actually is a fairly minimal agreement and we have seen a situation because the UK is determined to have this fiction of its its own sovereignty and directory autonomy where they didn't go down the line of having a effective agreement as part of the trade and cooperation agreement we see that as a major oversight and first of all it penalizes all UK and the food exporters into the European Union and we'll probably see more and more evidence over the coming weeks that also inhibits um EU um exporters into the UK as well so in terms of the wider picture this is something that we believe is a is a necessity but in terms of the RAC interface um where there is the will to try to eliminate veterinary checks as much as we possibly can through some sort of a spoke arrangement um ultimately the cleanest way of doing this is through a veterinary agreement um and it is absurd that the UK um is more or less adhering to the exact same standards as the European Union but is forgoing the opportunity to have that formally recognized as part of an agreement and in essence it's punishing itself as a whole but also creating huge difficulties down in the RAC as a consequence of that and so we see that as being a major uh gap that does need to be addressed and we hope probably more and hope than expectation we think that the the new incumbent to this trust uh take who's taken over from a different frost um should take the opportunity to have a reconsideration of that and even if they end up putting in place only a temporary agreement for a couple of years that at the very least will buy us some time to consider whether we can develop a more workable the spoke option just for the RAC situation. What we do have the problem at the UK is determined to try to develop as many free trade agreements with the rest of the world to try to slowly compensate for what's lost with the European Union and once they maintain this regulatory freedom to do those with as much freedom as they can though with effective agreement they can still make a number of deals anyway so it wouldn't entirely be mutually exclusive. Also we very much welcome what happened in terms of the breakthrough in medicines before Christmas that's something we've been working on very strongly over the past number number of years the first one in calling for the greatest period itself and then calling for a bespoke solution. In that regard we have always recognized the European Union were determined to reach a solution on that issue and they weren't going to allow themselves to be painted under a corner on that very particular point. The third issue I want to highlight is around governance which is perhaps an area that hasn't really got as much attention in the negotiations at present compared to some other issues and by that I don't mean the issue around the European Court of Justice which is very much a red herring that hasn't really been an issue for any local stakeholders here in Northern Ireland but was more of an issue for David Frost and Brexit extremists and that some sort of outlawed at 19th century version of sovereignty but even then we've seen the British government softening its position in the past few weeks which is welcoming that regard but what I do mean is around this issue as to how Northern Ireland elected representatives can have some consultant of input to the development of EU law in relation to areas of the of the key that will apply to Northern Ireland. We recognize that there is no perfect solution in this regard as Northern Ireland is outside the European Union and that there are limitations from in terms of what the EU think is possible and also perhaps more significantly we're seeing a problem with the UK acting as a key keeper wanting to be the vehicle for discussions with the European Commission rather than Northern Ireland having its own voice in that regard but we feel that the proposals in terms of seats for Northern Ireland in terms of joint committees and joint assault of working groups and sort of hyper super consultation exercises probably don't go far enough in terms of addressing that particular issue and I think it's one of the areas if you are saying that the protocol been betting in that we need to have some more formal means of addressing that democratic deficit so we can actually give the protocol legitimacy in terms of just to conclude with this chair in terms of the bigger picture in terms of the politics of where we we now are on this one I think things can go in two ways we have two potential futures ahead of us one is where we bed down the issues around the protocol we sort out the issues and the negotiations over the coming weeks and the protocol may provide a workable means for the foreseeable future for Northern Ireland devolution to be successful for Northern Ireland to benefit from access to the signal market for goods and also to benefit from its wider membership in the EU or sort of the UK economic area and it provides a very observable physical stability and as an aside from that the way unionism has reacted against the protocol in such vociferous terms and turned what could have been portrayed initially as an economic irritant turned that into a constitutional crisis it's been incredibly short-sighted and in the sense that if I was a unionist I would say that the protocol isn't exactly where we wanted to be but it provides a means for managing the Brexit that we wanted in relation to to to Northern Ireland and our job is to make this to make it work and this brings into the to the second scenario if we see a situation where the DUP pull out of the assembly over the coming weeks or even if the assembly limps on and there's another standoff after the the assembly election if we see a situation where the UK government continue to play some very irresponsible politics around Brexit and use Northern Ireland as their play thing in that regard and that includes a reckless triggering of article 16 which is not justified whatsoever in terms of our viewpoint in the sense that this essentially provides further negotiations but in a much more unstable environment and that will that will lead to a much more uncertain situation for Northern Ireland so unpacking the protocol in a vacuum could see the assembly unravel and it will also shall we say fuel the current constitutional debate ever further in the sense that while obviously people had their own different constitutional aspirations prior to 2016 the constitutional question was largely parked in Northern Ireland in terms of being an active political debate it wasn't something people thought was going to be a life issue for for many years that has been changed dramatically in the past few years largely fueled by the protocol fueled by Brexit and also the standoff around Irish language and the assembly and other some other issues so if we see further instability and if we see a situation where more and more people are led to give up on the on the notion of Northern Ireland that will lead more and more people thinking about constitutional change and there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever people take to their viewpoints in that respect but to our party point of view constitutional change is better considered and if it was ever was to happen to better to happen in the context of stable political structures in in Northern Ireland rather than something that's fairly chaotic and uncertain so the danger here is that if we see people playing fast and loose with the protocol and and Northern Ireland either from the DEP or the UK government we could see a very uncertain remainder of this year and a very uncertain few years and beyond as well so in that sense I would just conclude by saying that the next few weeks therefore I'm going to be very critical and the the consequences of getting this wrong are severe but the price if we can get this right in terms of landing the various aspects that are still causing contention could be very significant for a flourishing Northern Ireland over the years ahead so are there any other thoughts here Chair thank you very much