Statement by TUV leader and North Antrim MP Jim Allister:
“Yesterday Donald Trump called time on the special dispensation afforded the Republic of Ireland by the United States for tax purposes, highlighting the negative effect that the offshoring of US companies in the Republic for tax purposes was having on the US economy. This, of course, followed his already calling time on their freeriding on defence. As the United States requires the Republic to take on the normal responsibilities of statehood, it is important that the country that has even greater cause to do so, the United Kingdom, should now do the same.
“The United Kingdom agreed from 1922 to a Common Travel Area between itself and the Free State/Republic, effectively allowing the Republic to claim the benefits of being a country in its own right, while being shielded from some of the downsides normally associated with this.
“The United Kingdom has also done much to effectively provide the defence of the Republic, shielding their taxpayers from the need to shoulder this burden, even as they have, at times, harboured terrorists who have sought to attack us.
“Their pursuit of special dispensations, however, reached a whole new level with the Northern Ireland Protocol in relation to which they persuaded the EU that Brexit in the context of the Belfast Agreement necessitated creating and all-Ireland economy and imposing an Irish Sea border. This arrangement not only granted them the right to dispense with the normal rules of international relations and the imperative to respect the territorial integrity of other states, but also involved their promoting an arrangement that required the disenfranchisement of the people of Northern Ireland in 300 areas of law and our disinheritance from the greater part of our home economy.”
“In this context there is a very urgent need for the UK Government to follow the example of the United States. It must instruct the Republic to tell the European Union that as a party to the Belfast Agreement, Dublin has an obligation to uphold the right of the people of Northern Ireland to ‘pursue democratically national and political aspirations’ from the 1998 level, when the people of Northern Ireland had the right to stand for election to make all the laws to which they were subject. It can no longer be associated with supporting the current arrangement with its attack on the integrity of the right of the people of Northern Ireland to stand for election to make all the laws to which they are subject. The UK Government, the Republic of Ireland and wider EU must now pursue the only border solution consistent with the Belfast Agreement democracy commitment, Mutual Enforcement.”