New DUP leader: Irish government needs to stop supporting NI protocol

The newly elected leader of Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Jeffery Donaldson launched a scathing attack on the Northern Ireland Protocol after his leadership bid received endorsement from the DUP electoral college on Saturday, the Irish Times reported.

“I want to make clear to the Irish government that their cheerleading for the [Northern Ireland] Protocol is simply not acceptable, given the harm that it is doing to Northern Ireland, it is dragging our politics backwards,” he said.

Donaldson said it was inevitable that relations between Northern Ireland and the south would be damaged if the relationship between Britain and the island of Ireland continues to be “harmed” by the protocol.

“The Irish government and the Irish Prime Minister [Micheál Martin] have made clear that they want to protect the peace process, they want to protect political stability in Northern Ireland,” he said.

“But the Irish government has to step away from being a cheerleader for one part of the community. If the Irish Government is genuine about the peace process, is genuine about protecting political stability in Northern Ireland, then they too need to listen to Unionist concerns,” he added.

According to Donaldson, “the Belfast agreement is very clear – the three sets of relationships [north-south, Britain-Ireland and within Stormont] are interlocking and interdependent. If you harm one element, one relationship, you harm all of them. If the Irish government continues to support the imposition of a protocol that harms our relationship with Great Britain then, by implication, it harms the relationship between Dublin and Belfast,” the new DUP leader added.

“Now, I don’t want to be in that position. But I am very clear, and I will be saying this clearly to the Irish government, it is not acceptable for them to be on one side of this argument. It is not acceptable for them to simply listen to a nationalist perspective and not to listen to the concerns of unionists,” said Donaldson.

(Paula Kenny | EURACTIV.com)