Stormont MLAs have clashed over the future of post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland ahead of a vote on their continuation.
A debate on the Windsor Framework arrangements continued at Parliament Buildings in Belfast on Tuesday evening.
The previously stated voting intentions of the main parties suggest that members will back the extension of the measures for another four years when the vote is finally held after the conclusion of the debate.
The democratic consent process is a key element of the UK and EU’s Windsor Framework deal and is designed to give local elected representatives a say on the contentious trade rules that now operate in the region.
The framework, and its predecessor the NI Protocol, require checks and customs paperwork on goods moving from Great Britain into Northern Ireland.
Under the arrangements, which were designed to ensure no hardening of the Irish land border post-Brexit, Northern Ireland continues to follow many EU trade and customs rules.
This has proved highly controversial, with unionists arguing the system threatens Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.
Advocates of the arrangements say they help insulate the region from negative economic consequences of Brexit.
Launching the debate at the Assembly on Tuesday afternoon, Sinn Fein MLA Philip McGuigan insisted the arrangements mitigated against the worst excesses of the UK’s exit from the EU.
However, DUP MLA Jonathan Buckley, in a marathon speech that lasted over an hour, insisted the debate and vote was an “illusion of democracy”.
Mr McGuigan said he did not want to rehash the Brexit arguments and he acknowledged the current arrangements were not perfect.
“However, the protocol at least mitigates against the worst excesses of Brexit,” he said.
“Brexit could not be anything other than negative and was always going to cause problems.
“We have managed to protect ourselves from the worst impact, but there have been impacts.”
Mr McGuigan continued: “In the short term, the certainty and stability in the relationship with the EU that the protocol and Windsor Framework offers are vital and must be endorsed by the majority in this chamber today.
“Today’s vote and the continuation of the protocol protections are vitally important.”
Responding, Mr Buckley told MLAs: “What is today’s debate all about? Is it a genuine attempt to give members of the Northern Ireland Assembly a democratic say in the laws that govern them?
“Or, is it merely parliamentary parlour games, giving lip-service to the basic tenets of democratic consents?
“Be under no illusion, today’s debate, today’s vote is an illusion of democracy. A rigged vote in which the European Union already know the outcome.”
He added: “The outcome of this vote is known.
“I listened yesterday how some experts on the Brexit process and European relations say this vote is something special, the European Union don’t allow devolved governments to have say on trade policy, never mind the UK Government.
“They (the EU) simply would not let it happen if they thought that the outcome would not be guaranteed.”
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long insisted the arrangements were only required due to the result of Brexit.
She highlighted that many of the unionists who opposed the framework had championed a UK exit from the EU ahead of the 2016 referendum.
“I do get a sense that this entire debate feels a bit like ‘hello actions, let me introduce you to consequences’,” she said.
Ms Long said the debate marked “another important moment in our long journey towards some kind of security post-Brexit”.
“In the eight years since the UK voted to depart the European Union, a lot of time and energy and resources have been spent seeking to navigate the choppy and uncharted waters into which that decision launched us all,” she said.
“A lot of time, energy and resource that may have been better spent actually investing in our communities and making life better for the people we represent.”
Ulster Unionist Party MLA Steve Aiken said he had sympathy with the argument that the framework undermined the United Kingdom.
However, he said the “real reason” MLAs should be voting no was because the sections of the framework being debated “fundamentally undermine the competitiveness of our economy”.
“They work against our customers, our farmers, our hospitality sector, our green targets, and even our livestock and domestic animals,” he said.
“These articles remove this place’s role in democratic accountability.”
He added: “Supporting the retention of articles five to ten (of the framework) shows that narrow ideology supplants the needs of our people.
“Maybe not now, but soon the electorate will realise the severe long term implications of this vote and note who voted for the needs of the people rather than those of the EU and, may I even dare say, the British government.”
Leader of the Opposition at Stormont, SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole said Brexit had been a “disaster” for the UK.
“Northern Ireland has had some protections from Brexit,” he added.
Mr O’Toole pointed to statistics that he said showed that economic output in Northern Ireland had grown at a faster rate than elsewhere in the UK over the last five years.
He conceded that was not entirely due to the post-Brexit trade arrangements, but insisted the figures undermined unionist claims that the protocol/framework was damaging the region’s economy.
“The idea that the protocol has ravaged our economy and that we’re doing terribly as a result of the protocol is clearly and obviously self-evidently untrue,” he said.
“Because if it had been ravaging and damaging our economy in the way that some have claimed, then the numbers would bear it out. They don’t and they haven’t.”
A dispute over the so-called Irish Sea border led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2022, when the DUP withdrew then-first minister Paul Givan from the coalition executive.
The impasse lasted two years and ended in February when devolution returned.
Under the terms of the framework, a Stormont vote must be held on articles five to 10 of the Windsor Framework, which underpin the EU trade laws in force in Northern Ireland, before they expire.
The vote must take place before December 17.
Based on the numbers in the Assembly, MLAs are set to back the continuation of the measures for another four years, even though unionists are likely to oppose the move.
The DUP, UUP and TUV will all be voting against continuing the operation of the Windsor Framework.
MLAs from Sinn Fein, the SDLP and Alliance Party, which all favour continuation, submitted the required motion to table the vote after Stormont’s first and deputy first ministers failed to reach an agreement to do it jointly themselves.
The process to trigger the vote began at the end of October when Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn sent a letter to the Speaker Edwin Poots asking First Minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly to table a motion by the end of November.
Given the DUP is opposed to a continuation of arrangements that have brought added red tape on trade with the rest of the UK, it was not expected that a motion calling for their extension would be forthcoming from the joint office of a Sinn Fein First Minister and a DUP deputy First Minister.
Once the one-month time period for Ms O’Neill and Ms Little-Pengelly to table the motion expired at the end of November, it was open for other MLAs in Stormont to do it – prompting Sinn Fein’s Philip McGuigan, the Alliance Party’s Eoin Tennyson and the SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole to table it together.
Unlike other votes on contentious issues at Stormont, the motion does not require cross-community support to pass.
If it is voted through with a simple majority, the arrangements are extended for four years.
In that event, the Government is obliged to hold an independent review of how the framework is working.
If it wins cross-community support, which is a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists, then it is extended for eight years.
The chances of it securing such cross-community backing are highly unlikely.
Speaking from the backbenches during the debate, Ms Little-Pengelly accused those in favour of extending the arrangements of “dismissing and demeaning” the concerns of unionists.
“We cannot and ought not to sneer at each other across this chamber when we are raising constitutional and ideological and real concerns that we genuinely feel,” she said.
“That has been the hallmark of the last eight years and the lessons of the last eight years must be learned. It cannot be repeated. Issues must be addressed and promises kept.
“Make no mistake, the mishandling of Brexit and the subsequent protocol was an unparalleled act of constitutional self-harm by the UK government.
“No government should have ever signed up to such terms, an agreement that damaged the very fabric of our constitutional settlement and shattered the integrity of the UK internal market.”
Sinn Fein finance minister Caoimhe Archibald highlighted the fact that the arrangements allowed companies in Northern Ireland to sell freely in the UK internal market and into the EU single market.
“I think the vast majority of us do recognise that we need to maintain both our north/south and east/west trade, and that has not been easy to achieve. It has required difficult compromise and imaginative solutions,” she said.
Ms Archibald acknowledged there would be more Brexit-related challenges in the future.
“But the arrangements in place are better than the alternative of a land border and checks on this island that would have had a catastrophic impact on our integrated supply chains, not to mention our integrated economies and communities,” she said.
