The NI/Ireland protocol agreed by the UK and EU as part of the withdrawal agreement means that all of the UK will leave the EU customs union, but NI will continue to align with EU regulations on goods and customs to prevent a hard border in Ireland.

The implications of that arrangement are starting to become clearer.

At a Westminster committee meeting this week, DAERA deputy secretary Norman Fulton explained to MPs that the future is mapped out for NI agriculture.

“We are very clearly in one system, and we don’t have the scope to change under the protocol, but that is not the case for the rest of the UK,” said Fulton.

He maintained that the challenge for policymakers will be to ensure that there is a level playing field within the UK market, a point reinforced by UFU president Ivor Ferguson, who warned that a lowering of standards in Britain would be a “disaster” for NI agriculture.

“Lower standards in Britain would mean lower costs of production, but we (in NI) would then have higher costs – we couldn’t accept a lower price,” he said.

He also defended the NI position that there should continue to be some form of area-based payment into the future (a resilience/volatility payment), and suggested that it could be set at between 30% and 50% of the current budget.

In addition, he argued that overall funding cannot be cut, and is necessary to protect farm incomes, and ensure that NI farmers are not disadvantaged when compared to farmers south of the Irish border.

House of Lords

Meanwhile, at a House of Lords EU select committee hearing on Tuesday, trade and legal experts warned about the complexity of the NI/Ireland protocol.

“It is a tremendously complicated piece of legislation,” said Sylvia de Mars from Newcastle University. “Understanding this will be a matter of several people taking several months,” added David Henig from the think-tank the European Centre for International Political Economy.

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