IT is inevitable that the incoherence that besets the DUP's opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol will also affect the running of government departments led by its ministers.
The Department of Agriculture and its minister Edwin Poots are particularly exposed in this area.
Officials from Mr Poots's department are responsible for conducting checks on products of animal origin when they arrive at Belfast and Larne ports.
This puts Mr Poots in charge of implementing some of the most visible and onerous manifestations of the protocol he so stridently opposes.
A further unavoidable complication for the DUP is that it was their support for a hard Brexit and Boris Johnson that led to the sea border in the first place.
Every time it attempts to advance the argument that the protocol is bad for the Union, the DUP also invites a heavy portion of the blame for its existence and offers a reminder of its own poor judgment in enthusiastically backing a figure as patently unreliable as Mr Johnson.
Mr Poots's adventures around the sea border have so far included claims that it will cause food shortages in hospitals and schools.
And at the start of February Mr Poots withdrew inspectors from Larne port, citing security fears, with Mid and East Antrim Council taking the same course of action with its officials
Confusion remains over these events, with Chief Constable Simon Byrne saying there was no evidence of credible threats against port staff.
Last month, while Mr Poots was off work receiving cancer treatment, interim agriculture minister Gordon Lyons ordered that work on permanent inspection posts for Brexit port checks should be halted; the department has refused to release communication about this to the Irish News under the Freedom of Information Act.
Together, this fuels the perception that the DUP itself is in disarray over how to oppose the protocol while remaining in government and in charge of departments implementing its measures.
Indeed, there were elements of farce this week when the agriculture department placed adverts for port inspectors after Mr Poots had vowed he would not recruit more staff.
The advert was later withdrawn and described as a mistake. That it appeared at all will lead many to conclude that the dysfunctionality of the DUP's approach to the protocol is having a negative effect on its government departments and the provision of taxpayer-funded services to all of the north's citizens.
