THE STORMONT executive needs to play a greater role in selling the economic and peace benefits of the protocol, according to the lead author of a recent report into the impact of the post-Brexit trade arrangements.
Professor Peter Shirlow, director of Irish Studies at University of Liverpool, says investment prompted by the north's unique trading status has already begun and that the protocol has the potential to "lift the economy from being consumption-based to one that is more innovative and production centred".
"There will be nothing as expensive and costly to our shared future if we do not wake up to the fact that this is the best opportunity, in a generation, to deliver a peace dividend," he writes in The Irish News today.
The academic says "megaphone diplomacy" has obscured recognition of the opportunities created by the Irish Sea trade border.
He argues that the discourse around the protocol should shift "from obstacles to opportunities" and that the Northern Ireland Executive should take a lead role in this.
"It (the executive) has to elbow its way into the centre of negotiations with a plan for the facilitation of investment and evidence for the mitigations required.
"It should be demanding a voice within the protocol committees and a re-invigoration of strands 2 and 3 of the Good Friday Agreement."
Professor Shirlow, who was lead author of the Institute of Irish Studies recent `The Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol Responding to Tensions or Enacting Opportunity?’ report, says Stormont’s politicians need to be "more than mere observers of a geopolitical game".
"Politics has to shift into a concentration upon possibilities and prospects," he writes.
"Even within the politics of variant constitutional positions, building a stronger and sustainable economy will mean collective executive success."
He says the protocol would enable a "stronger all-island economy" but could also aid in "re-constructing the Northern Ireland to GB dynamic".
"(It's) akin to the proverb – `It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice'."
