Newton Emerson: Welcome to the North – the gateway to Ireland

Goods entering the Republic from Britain fell by a fifth last year, according to the Central Statistics Office.

At the same time, goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain rose by a fifth and exports from North to South shot up by two-thirds.

Hauliers and port officials on both sides of the Border say all this has one simple explanation. Shipments to the Republic from Britain are being diverted via the North’s three ports, where there are fewer checks due to the Brexit protocol.

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There is no sign the European Union considers this a leak in the single market, even with many checks not taking place due to extended grace periods. The protocol as it stands is apparently protection enough.

These statistics come at an awkward time for the DUP, which is planning a stunt to veto sea border checks at the Northern Executive.

Nearly all checks are the responsibility of Stormont's department of agriculture, under DUP minister Edwin Poots. His officials are also producing the awkward statistics.

International obligation

Although the sea border’s operation is devolved the protocol is an international obligation, so the Belfast Agreement entitles London to override Belfast and order its implementation.

When Poots tried a similar stunt two years ago, the British government did not even have to issue orders. A reminder of its “expectations of the Northern Ireland executive” saw checks resume in a week.

But the DUP feels the need for more performative petulance with an Assembly election looming. If only the party had not painted itself into such a corner, it might see there is a story emerging that can be spun to unionism’s liking.

Some loyalists and republicans have presented the protocol as creating an “economic united Ireland”, by cutting Northern Ireland off from Britain while fostering cross-Border trade.

That is a very different conception from the North becoming a bridge between Britain and the Republic, mainly at Dublin Port’s expense. A huge share of Northern Ireland’s own trade with Britain is being diverted away from Dublin. If you are going to make a constitutional fetish out of container movements, the protocol is creating a more united UK.

Most unionists would dismiss this as sophistry because an intra-UK barrier has still been created. That is where the scale of the checks, also revealed in the new figures, casts the protocol in a gentler orange light.

Of the 9,500 freight lorries entering Northern Ireland from Britain each week, only 2,500 are asked to show any shipping or identity documents – a brief formality – with just 140 subject to physical inspection. That is 20 a day across all three ports, or one lorry in 70.

Mitigations

The end of grace periods would not necessarily see a rise in inspections. The EU has already offered mitigations it claims would do away with 80 per cent of checks on food. Most of the physical inspections occurring now are on lorries that fail to produce documents when asked, because the hauliers or firms involved do not realise they need them or know how to provide them.

Inspection then takes hours because the entire contents of the lorry must be examined. Once everyone has figured out the paperwork, physical inspections will be random or intelligence-led and faster in both cases.

This situation is rapidly improving, according to a survey last week of Northern Ireland manufacturers. A quarter said they were struggling with sea border arrangements, down from 40 per cent who said they were struggling in the same survey last July. Protocol paperwork is no small burden but business is learning to live with it, helped for the moment by financial support from the British government.

In 2017, a report by Ireland’s Revenue Commissioners on implementing a post-Brexit land border said the EU should be satisfied with one in 200 lorries being visually inspected, along with checks in the market to ensure goods ended up at their correct destination.

Unionists and Tory Brexiteers hark back to this as a lost moment of common sense. Had new taoiseach Leo Varadkar not ordered work on such reports to cease, they claim, there could have been a land border so soft as to be effectively non-existent, requiring no backstop or protocol.

If checks at Larne, Belfast and Warrenpoint could come down to one lorry in 200, as is entirely realistic, would unionists accept the sea border was effectively non-existent?

In its current negotiations with Brussels, the British government is seeking checks in the market instead of port inspections on goods staying in Northern Ireland – a proposal it calls ‘dual regulation’. The DUP and UUP support this; DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson’s plan is to claim it would remove the sea border, for the North at least.

Having set himself such a desperately low bar for success, would half a dozen inspections a day for Northern Ireland be the end of the world, or the union?