The Stormont Assembly has voted to extend post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland for another four years.
The vote to continue with the contentious arrangements passed on a straight majority basis after a lengthy and at times ill-tempered and fractious debate at Parliament Buildings, with 48 MLAs voting in favour and 36 voting against.
The debate and vote were required under the democratic consent mechanism in the UK and EU’s Windsor Framework deal and were designed to give local elected representatives a say on the trade rules that now operate in the region.
The framework, and its predecessor the NI Protocol, require checks and customs paperwork on goods moving from Great Britain into Northern Ireland.
Under the arrangements, which were designed to ensure no hardening of the Irish land border post-Brexit, Northern Ireland continues to follow many EU trade and customs rules.
This has proved highly controversial, with unionists arguing the system threatens Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.
Unionist MLAs voted against continuing the arrangements on Tuesday evening, but they were outnumbered by members of Sinn Fein, the Alliance Party and the SDLP who all voted in favour of an extension.
The three parties all argued the framework serves to protect Northern Ireland from the negative economic consequences of Brexit.
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll also voted for an extension.
A Stormont vote had to be held on articles five to 10 of the Windsor Framework, which underpins the EU trade laws in force in Northern Ireland, before December 17.
Unlike other votes on contentious issues at Stormont, the motion did not require cross-community support to pass.
If it had secured cross-community support – ie a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists in favour – then the arrangements would have been extended for eight years.
However, the vote passing on only a straight majority means the relevant articles of the framework will instead be extended for four years.
Passage on a simple majority also means the Government is now obliged to instigate an independent review of how the framework is working.
Advocating for an extension, Sinn Fein MLA and Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald highlighted the fact that the arrangements allowed companies in Northern Ireland to sell freely and unfettered within the UK internal market and into the EU single market.
“I think the vast majority of us do recognise that we need to maintain both our north/south and east/west trade, and that has not been easy to achieve. It has required difficult compromise and imaginative solutions,” she said.
Ms Archibald acknowledged there would be more Brexit-related challenges in the future.
“But the arrangements in place are better than the alternative of a land border and checks on this island that would have had a catastrophic impact on our integrated supply chains, not to mention our integrated economies and communities,” she said.
However, speaking from the backbenches, DUP deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly accused those in favour of extending the arrangements of “dismissing and demeaning” the concerns of unionists.
“We cannot and ought not to sneer at each other across this chamber when we are raising constitutional and ideological and real concerns that we genuinely feel,” she said.
“That has been the hallmark of the last eight years and the lessons of the last eight years must be learned. It cannot be repeated. Issues must be addressed and promises kept.
“Make no mistake, the mishandling of Brexit and the subsequent protocol was an unparalleled act of constitutional self-harm by the UK government.
“No government should have ever signed up to such terms, an agreement that damaged the very fabric of our constitutional settlement and shattered the integrity of the UK internal market.”
Earlier, her party colleague Jonathan Buckley branded the debate an “illusion of democracy” during a marathon speech that lasted more than an hour.
Alliance Party leader and Stormont Justice Minister Naomi Long insisted the arrangements were required only because of the result of Brexit.
She highlighted that many of the unionists who opposed the framework had championed a UK exit from the EU ahead of the 2016 referendum.
“I do get a sense that this entire debate feels a bit like ‘hello actions, let me introduce you to consequences’,” she said.
Ms Long said the debate marked “another important moment in our long journey towards some kind of security post-Brexit”.
“In the eight years since the UK voted to depart the European Union, a lot of time and energy and resources have been spent seeking to navigate the choppy and uncharted waters into which that decision launched us all,” she said.
“A lot of time, energy and resource that may have been better spent actually investing in our communities and making life better for the people we represent.”
Ulster Unionist Party MLA Steve Aiken said he had sympathy with the argument that the framework undermined the United Kingdom.
However, he said the “real reason” MLAs should be voting no was because the sections of the framework being debated “fundamentally undermine the competitiveness of our economy”.
“They work against our customers, our farmers, our hospitality sector, our green targets, and even our livestock and domestic animals,” he said.
“These articles remove this place’s role in democratic accountability.”
He added: “Supporting the retention of articles five to 10 (of the framework) shows that narrow ideology supplants the needs of our people.
“Maybe not now, but soon the electorate will realise the severe long-term implications of this vote and note who voted for the needs of the people rather than those of the EU and, may I even dare say, the British government.”
Leader of the Opposition at Stormont, SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole said Brexit had been a “disaster” for the UK.
“Northern Ireland has had some protections from Brexit,” he added.
Mr O’Toole pointed to statistics that he said showed that economic output in Northern Ireland had grown at a faster rate than elsewhere in the UK over the last five years.
He conceded that was not entirely thanks to the post-Brexit trade arrangements, but insisted the figures undermined unionist claims that the protocol/framework was damaging the region’s economy.
“The idea that the protocol has ravaged our economy and that we’re doing terribly as a result of the protocol is clearly and obviously self-evidently untrue,” he said.
“Because if it had been ravaging and damaging our economy in the way that some have claimed, then the numbers would bear it out. They don’t and they haven’t.”
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TUV MLA Timothy Gaston said it was “absurd” that the requirement for cross-community support – a key plank of the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast peace agreement – had been set aside on what he described as the most controversial vote in the history of Stormont.
“The supposed protections of the Belfast Agreement only ever applied for as long as they suited nationalism,” he said.
“Once unionism was in the minority in this place, the protections no longer apply.”
A dispute over the so-called Irish Sea border led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2022, when the DUP withdrew then-first minister Paul Givan from the coalition executive.
The impasse lasted two years and ended in February when devolution returned.
