NI businesses call on Republic to press EU for Brexit grace period extensions

Business leaders here are asking the Irish Government to help secure an early announcement of an extension to Brexit grace periods.Dublin says it wants to ensure European officials are aware of the impact of decisions on Northern Ireland, while Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has spoken in favour of “modest extensions”.Talks between Irish officials and the European Commission were due to take place yesterday.But for some industry representatives it is not enough, and they argue all parties need to move faster.According to RTE, Michael Gove, the UK minister responsible for Brexit, sent a letter to the European Commission demanding changes to the NI Protocol and an extension to the two grace periods – one currently set to end in March, the other in June.The letter, particularly its tone, angered EU officials, according to the RTE report.The discussions between Irish officials and the European Commission follows the dispute over vaccines after Article 16 of the protocol was briefly invoked to ensure supplies did not cross the border from the Republic to Northern Ireland.Article 16 allows the UK and the EU to act unilaterally if the application of the protocol is leading to “economic, societal or environmental difficulties”.These difficulties must be both serious and “liable to persist”.The Irish Government wants to make sure future proposed EU legislation is “scanned for any potential impact on Northern Ireland… so that potential complications caused by Northern Ireland effectively being in two internal markets at the same time are spotted early and avoided”, according to RTE.Mr Coveney has indicated that Dublin is open to “modest extensions”, but businesses here want the Irish Government to explicitly advocate that and ask for it to happen.Hauliers have reported serious problems, particularly in relation to groupage and the movement of food and live animals, and Mr Martin said there needed to be extensions.The call for extensions was echoed by the hospitality industry, which noted that the movement of goods between Britain and Northern Ireland is not close to full capacity due to the closure of most businesses due to the pandemic.