00:00 This announcement by the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party is significant
00:06 because within the party which was pro-Brexit but opposed to staying within
00:12 the kind of a loose European Union trade arrangements because of course it shares
00:16 the island of Ireland with the Republic to the south but the north is part of
00:21 Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So that's the difficulty and they've agreed
00:27 now that they as a party, 130 of them, five hour long party, a five hour meeting
00:33 that they've agreed that they can move ahead provided there's new legislation
00:38 by the UK government. So it is significant to try and stop this
00:41 stalemate with no government in the province of Northern Ireland and this is
00:46 what Geoffrey Donaldson had to say at something like 1 a.m. after this meeting.
00:50 This package I believe safeguards Northern Ireland's place in the Union and will
00:57 restore our place within the UK internal market. It will remove checks for goods
01:03 moving within the UK and remaining in Northern Ireland and will end Northern
01:10 Ireland automatically following future EU laws. Now if you think that's about
01:16 economy you'd be wrong. It's about politics and it invariably is. Chris
01:20 Heaton-Harris is the Northern Irish Secretary in the British government. He
01:26 now, if this is to work, he has to try and look at the details. He will address
01:32 Parliament in London and there could be movement quite quickly provided that the
01:38 detail stands to scrutiny and it's accepted by politicians on both sides
01:43 and we could see some changes in terms of the Northern Irish, the Stormont
01:48 building and people actually meeting in that building. Now there are
01:53 lots of details to go through and not least that the largest party in Northern
01:58 Ireland now is Sinn Féin, the Nationalist Party and the president of Sinn Féin,
02:03 Mary Lou Macdonald, said that we're on the cusp of restoration of government in
02:06 Northern Ireland. That's a very good thing. It's a long time coming but we're
02:09 conscious there's a huge amount of work to be done, not least because it was the
02:13 DUP that actually pulled the plug on local government in Northern Ireland in
02:18 2022. But you know what I can't believe? Tomorrow won't be four years since the
02:23 UK officially left the European Union. I know the conversation went a lot longer
02:28 but officially left. Brexit officially happened four years ago so in that
02:32 context why is this significant? Why is it important? It's significant for the 1.9
02:37 million people who live in Northern Ireland. They are about possibly to have
02:41 a government running their own affairs. There will be money and finance coming
02:45 from the UK government to improve conditions, living conditions for people
02:49 who live and work in Northern Ireland. And while the various politicians have
02:53 been at each other's throats over a political ideology, the people of
02:57 Northern Ireland of course, like elsewhere, have had to deal with
03:01 what's happened with Brexit and what's happened with all these trade
03:05 agreements. And the trade agreement was in terms of goods coming in from England
03:10 or Scotland or Wales into Northern Ireland, whether they, because Northern
03:14 Ireland is attached by land to the Republic of Ireland and so the European
03:18 Union, that was the problem. Now they're going to try and fudge around the rules
03:23 again to have a green lane, a red lane in terms of costs on top of what is
03:30 imported and exported. That's the detail we'll be hearing about tomorrow.
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