THREATS by the British government to set aside the Northern Ireland Protocol "are not helpful", Irish EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness has said.
Brexit Minister Lord Frost said it would be a "significant mistake" to think the UK would not trigger Article 16 - the clause which allows parts of the protocol to be temporarily set aside.
The protocol, negotiated by the British government and the EU last year, has kept Northern Ireland in the European single market for goods but has also created a customs border between the north and Britain.
Unionists have said the protocol has damaged trade with Britain and have called for it to be scrapped.
Article 16 can be triggered if parts of the protocol are causing "serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade".
Ms McGuinness said the agreement would "not be renegotiated".
She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show there was a need to "solve problems for people in Northern Ireland".
"We want the protocol to achieve its full ambition for Northern Ireland," she said.
"Total access, of course, to the UK market, but absolute free access to the European Union, which is an enormous market."
Ms McGuinness said that during Vice-President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic's visit to Northern Ireland, he "did not get the message... that they wanted the protocol to be scrapped or set aside, but people want solutions on the ground".
TUV leader Jim Allister said triggering Article 16 is "but a temporary fix, it's not an end of the matter".
"At the end of it, are we still left in a foreign single market for goods, subject to a foreign customs code, overseen by a foreign laws that we don't make and can't change, and adjudicated upon by a foreign court," he told the BBC's Sunday Politics programme.
