Northern Ireland’s first minister-designate has urged the US to “drum up” investment in the region now that Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal has removed a key obstacle to trade.
Unlike her counterparts in the Democratic Unionist party, Michelle O’Neill, vice-president of the nationalist Sinn Féin party, has welcomed the UK-EU Windsor framework, which aims to ease post-Brexit trade friction.
She was in Washington last month in advance of President Joe Biden’s visit to Belfast next week to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and said all the talk then had been “investment, investment, investment”. Biden’s special economic envoy for Northern Ireland, Joe Kennedy III, she said, had been waiting for the Windsor deal before getting to work in earnest.
“I want him to drum up business, I want him to bring investment — and that’s what he’s up for,” she told a dinner organised by the British Irish Chamber of Commerce.
Brexit left Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods. A customs border was put in the Irish Sea to avoid the reimposition of the hard land border that was removed when the Good Friday Agreement ended three decades of conflict.
But in a region where a majority voted to remain in the EU, O’Neill said the “big prize” for everybody, regardless of their political persuasion, would be a return to the EU through Irish reunification.
“That’s something that will become a big question for people certainly in the next decade,” she said.
The Windsor framework allows goods sent from Britain and staying in Northern Ireland to travel check-free through a green lane. Those crossing into Ireland and the EU go through a red lane under EU rules.
But the DUP says that still undermines the region’s UK status and ability to trade with Britain. It has been vetoing the power-sharing executive over the issue since May last year.
O’Neill said it was a “missed opportunity” that the region’s biggest unionist party was continuing to boycott the Stormont assembly and executive ahead of Biden’s visit on April 11-12.
“I think his visit will be very much of an economic focus . . . and he will be encouraging the parties to come together and make it work,” O’Neill said, adding that the anniversary “should be a huge moment . . . to reflect on the last 25 years — the transformation of our society, all that’s been achieved”.
“Equally what’s important is what the next 25 years hold . . . so I think the particular focus that the Americans bring to this place is just something we should grab on to and really, really maximise.”
When the executive is eventually restored, O’Neill, whose Sinn Féin party won the largest number of seats in the Stormont assembly for the first time last May, has earmarked the economy ministry for her party and pledged to shake up Northern Ireland’s inward investment agency.
She wants to forge partnerships with industry to boost productivity and training, to build clusters and to focus on the all-island economy.
She also wants a restored executive to lobby London for harmonised corporate tax rules. Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate is set to rise to 15 per cent for large companies under a global tax deal — below the UK’s 25 per cent.
