Agriculture minister calls for “reality check” on the level of checks required by Protocol

By PA reporter

Stormont’s Agriculture minister Edwin Poots has called for a “reality check” on the level of checks required by the Northern Ireland Protocol

Mr Poots referenced the prediction of his department’s chief vet who last week highlighted that when a grace period limiting red tape on moving supermarket goods from GB lapses, Northern Ireland will be expected to conduct the same number of agri-food checks as the whole EU combined.

Briefing members of his Assembly scrutiny committee, Mr Poots asked where he was supposed to find the number of vets needed to take on this huge workload.

“At this stage we’re potentially looking at around 400 staff (for the checks) and a very high number of vets being required,” he said.

“Now I’m not sure where I’m going to get these vets because there already is a shortage of vets in the UK, so I’m not sure where we’re going to get them.”

He said he could not allow vets to be diverted away from existing food safety work in Northern Ireland.

Edwin Poots said the UK Government’s unilateral move to extend the grace period to October only “kicks the can down the road”.

He said moving vets from other food safety work would undermine Northern Ireland’s reputation for food standards and providence.

“Taking vets out of meat plants for example, chicken factories and pork factories to check something which has always been checked by vets (in GB), has been produced to the same standards as here and the rest of European Union would be an entirely illogical thing to do and a complete waste of time and resource and cause a significant addition to the cost of bringing food into Northern Ireland and consequently an additional cost to the consumer,” he said.

“So we do need a reality check on all of this. I welcome the extension of the grace period. But that, to some extent, just kicks the can down the road. We need people to be realistic about this. You know you were told last week that Northern Ireland would have as many checks as the rest of the EU put together. How can that be a sensible or a rational place?”

Mr Poots said political rivals who had called for the “full implementation” of the protocol should apologise to the people of Northern Ireland.

“The consequence of that rigorous implementation of the protocol is a massive number of people involved in checks, additional cost to the industry, additional cost to consumer, damage to trading relationships that exist and significant consequences for business and the consumer in Northern Ireland,” he said.

“And perhaps those who were calling for the rigorous implementation would like to apologise to the Northern Ireland public and indeed send a message to the European Union that they no longer want rigorous implementation because they have seen what it’s like and rigorous implementation is going to wreck our economy if we don’t address this issue.”

Noting the heightening tensions in Northern Ireland, Edwin Poots asked whether the EU was intent on “destroying” the peace process.

“What has been imposed upon Northern Ireland is irrational, it is oppressive, it is burdensome and actually, frankly, ridiculous,” he said.

The minister acknowledged the protocol did provide opportunities in respect of the unfettered access it offered traders to sell into both the EU single market and the UK internal market.

Using a footballing analogy, he insisted that benefit was significantly outweighed by the negatives, describing dual market access as scoring a “wonder goal” in a 6-1 defeat.