Opinion

Claire Simpson: DUP like a container ship stuck in the Suez Canal over Northern Ireland Protocol

Agriculture minister Edwin Poots
Agriculture minister Edwin Poots Agriculture minister Edwin Poots

Pity those who applied to work as government port inspectors, only to be told several days later that the job advertisements had been published by mistake.

“Not authorised”, is the phrase agriculture minister Edwin Poots used, by which he meant not authorised by him.

Ministers don’t usually get involved in hiring of staff. They are supposed to show leadership and drive the direction of a department. Unfortunately with Mr Poots at the helm, the Department of Agriculture has as much direction as a container ship wedged in the Suez Canal. There’s no point in sending in sand dredgers or a flotilla of tug-boats, the DUP minister isn’t for turning.

Last month, interim agriculture minister Gordon Lyons, who took on the role while Mr Poots was having cancer surgery, ordered that work on permanent inspection posts for post-Brexit port checks should be halted.

We were told that Stormont, or rather the DUP, would await “further clarity” from the British government before going ahead with any customs posts.

Given that it was Boris Johnson’s government which negotiated and supported the protocol, I’m not sure how much more clarity it can give.

Had the DUP not supported a hard Brexit in the first place then we wouldn’t be in the situation we are now.

Not knowing when to stop digging, Mr Poots decided to blame his own staff for the job adverts - nothing to do with him.

His statement seemed a little at odds with that of his own department. A departmental spokeswoman said the adverts were meant to recruit general agricultural inspectors, including those who would investigate animal welfare, and had “incorrectly specified that new staff would be solely located to the Points of Entry”.

However, Mr Poots said the recruitment “will not continue as no authorisation was given for it”, suggesting that there is a freeze on the hiring of all agricultural inspectors.

He blustered that he will be seeking a “full explanation”. Surely we all would? Either the north needs extra agricultural inspectors or it doesn’t.

The department’s reluctance to release documents to The Irish News under Freedom of Information legislation suggests that the public won’t get a full explanation about the wider issue - on what basis did Mr Lyons decide to halt work on inspection posts?

Of course the most immediate casualties of this mess are staff themselves.

In the three months since Brexit kicked in, port staff have been withdrawn and then reinstated amid claims and counter-claims about their safety. Initial concern that staff had been threatened turned into a political row about how credible the threats were, with the PSNI blaming individuals or small groups, rather than loyalist paramilitaries.

Arlene Foster’s claims of “dangerous” loyalist alienation over the protocol have the feel of the bad old days of dog-whistle politics when the DUP whipped up tensions, then stood back and denied all responsibility.

She may claim that loyalists and unionists feel sidelined over the deal but wasn’t it ever thus? As founding DUP member Wallace Thompson told the News Letter last week, unionists feel they have been “betrayed over and over again and we're always on the back foot”.

The reality is Mrs Foster’s dysfunctional party opposes the protocol yet remains in charge of the department whose job it is to implement checks.

The DUP has been the main player in an online petition against the protocol and, more recently, a wider unionist-backed crowdfunding appeal for a legal challenge against border checks.

The UK cannot keep extending grace periods on Irish Sea border checks indefinitely, particularly since the European Union has declared an extension until October 1 illegal.

So what happens in the meantime? Will there be no movement on border checks until opposition to the protocol is defeated, or more likely given that Boris is in charge, continuously ignored?

Maybe the bigger question is whether the DUP is capable of managing the Department of Agriculture at all.

Some staff might be wishing for a return to the three years when Stormont was on hiatus. At least then any lack of leadership could be blamed on not having a minister. Now the department has one who refuses to lead.