Northern Ireland

If the signals from Belfast yesterday were that a deal was imminent, the message from Munich was one of caution. 

‘This is not rocket science’ – the words of former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, and one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, on the current post-Brexit trade dispute over Northern Ireland. Pressure is building on the EU and the UK to solve the impasse over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the agreement that puts…

Could a deal between the EU and the UK government to amend the Northern Ireland Protocol be imminent? 

We spoke to Dr. Ursula Mason, chair for the Royal College of GPs in Northern Ireland.

Across the UK, hospitals are under immense strain. But in Northern Ireland, the problems are on another scale. Before Covid, more than one in sixteen of the population were on a hospital waiting list, and problems have gotten much worse since then. Our own Factcheck team have been looking into the state of the health…

We were joined by the conservative MP, Steve Brine who is chair of the Health and Social Care select committee.

The offer by the Royal College of Nurses – to suspend strikes if the Government meets with them to negotiate over pay –  looks set to go unheeded.

The rift between the government and the EU has widened again, as Foreign Secretary Liz Truss published plans to unilaterally change the Northern Ireland Protocol.

We spoke to Democratic Unionist Party MP Sammy Wilson.

We spoke to Senator Lisa Chambers – the deputy leader of Ireland’s Upper House and the European and Foreign Affairs spokesperson for the governing party, Fianna Fáil.

We spoke to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson and asked him about plans to reform the Northern Ireland Protocol just two years after his government agreed to it.

Boris Johnson has insisted he doesn’t want to scrap the Northern Ireland protocol but to fix it – and said that all the parties he met on his visit to Belfast today agreed it needed reform.

The DUP had threatened to stop the Northern Ireland Assembly functioning, in protest at the post-Brexit trading protocol, and today that came to pass. 

For the first time in 101 years, a nationalist party is in the majority in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin said the country was entering a “new era” as they overtook the DUP.

Immunity for crimes committed during the Northern Ireland Troubles will depend on people co-operating with the new reconciliation body set up by the Government.