Statement by TUV Bannside Councillor Timothy Gaston:
“Today’s announcement by the Specialised Committee merely underscores the fact that the Protocol is unreformable and must go. It is shocking that decisions on animal and plant health issues and medicines are not made by our own country but decided in consultation with EU bureaucrats. Far from representing progress, it graphically underscores the democratic and constitutional obscenity which is the Protocol.
“Those who claim otherwise expect us to welcome it as some magnanimous gesture from our colonial overlords.
“For as long as Northern Ireland is subject to foreign laws we do not make and cannot change and dictated to by people like Maroš Šefčovič who is accountable to no one in Northern Ireland the current situation will be intolerable.”