Brexit Northern Ireland deal: EU protocol agreement could see Stormont return to life

When it was announced that Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, was to fly in to the UK on Monday, it was a clear indication a new Northern Ireland protocol deal was to be signed.

I was in Belfast yesterday as the deal, outlined by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak following his meeting with Ms von der Leyen, was announced.

Hailed as a “decisive breakthrough”, Mr Sunak said the agreement removed “any sense” of a border in the Irish Sea. Since Brexit, the open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland – key to the peace process – has loomed as an insurmountable problem. As a result, so far, British goods imported to Northern Ireland have been subject to checks to ensure they conform with European regulations, even though Northern Ireland itself is part of the UK and therefore not a member of the EU.

This is now to change. However, the politicians who this affects most – Northern Ireland’s MLAs – were not party to the discussions. The European court will still have the final say on single market issues – albeit with a “Stormont brake”, to be applied by MLAs. But whether or not the DUP – the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland – agrees to the deal remains to be seen. The devil, as it has been said many times, will be in the detail.

The main political parties in Northern Ireland have been unable to form a government since the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) blocked a power-sharing deal to protest the Northern Ireland Protocol last year.

Without an agreement, the party is unlikely to return to Stormont. The Stormont assembly – the Northern Irish equivalent of Holyrood – has not been in session for a year after the DUP walked away over the Brexit issue. Under a power sharing deal agreed in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, both republican and unionist sides need to take part in the assembly for it to operate.

Yesterday, as the province awaited news of the deal, Stormont itself remained quiet. A few tourists were wandering the corridors, while in the bowels of the building, security guards were among few eating lunch in the staff canteen. A handful of TV crews were twiddling their thumbs in the iconic main hall, in hope of party press conferences once a deal was announced. Those who work there tell me the current atmosphere is unrecognisable from the buzzing devolved administration in session just a year ago.

Fundamentally, little is being done in Northern Ireland, politically speaking. No bills can pass through Parliament, health and education budgets cannot be considered.

People here tell me they want an agreement so that life can go on. Others fear that another deal rejected by the DUP on the grounds of what the party has dubbed a “democratic deficit” could spark a wave of loyalist violence.

Since the original post-Brexit protocol was introduced, many companies have pulled out of delivering to Northern Ireland due to the increased red tape – or dramatically increased delivery costs of importing goods from the mainland. Some Northern Irish shoppers have resorted to having items delivered to friends and family who live in Scotland, England or Wales and then sent on through the post.

"The schools are crumbling, there’s no-one looking at healthcare, we need them to get back into Stormont,” one taxi driver told me. "Prices of everything have gone up. This is what our politicians should be concentrating on.”