PM visit to NI divides opinion

The First Minister has praised the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for enabling speedy vaccine roll-out, while touring a vaccination centre in County Fermanagh with the Prime Minster.

Mrs Foster's power-sharing partner, Sinn Fein's deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill, refused to welcome the premier to Belfast on Friday in her Stormont role after a request for a political meeting with her and Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald was not accepted.

Boris Johnson held “frank'' conversations with the DUP on the Northern Ireland Protocol during the trip to Mrs Foster's constituency earlier today (Friday).

Extra checks on goods passing through its ports from the rest of the UK following Brexit have angered unionists.

Mrs Foster urged him to “stand up for Northern Ireland'' and ditch the “intolerable'' Protocol governing Irish Sea trade post-Brexit.

She said he had been in “listening mode'' and “alive to the issues''.

The First Minister said: “Not a single unionist party in Northern Ireland supports this unworkable Protocol.

“Rather than protect the Belfast Agreement and its successor agreements, the Protocol has created societal division and economic harm.”

A Sinn Fein MP has branded the trip a ‘Unionist day out’.

You can listen to John Finucane’s comments here.

Mr Johnson also visited RAF Aldergrove in Co Antrim on Friday.

Attending Queen's University Belfast this afternoon, Boris Johnson said the Northern Ireland Protocol is not operating in the way he envisaged.

The Prime Minister said he did not think the arrangements he agreed with the EU would involve restrictions on the movements of food products such as sausages, on parcel deliveries and on GB soil entering Northern Ireland.

He said the protocol was operating in an imbalanced way and was causing irritation to the loyalist and unionist community in Northern Ireland as a consequence.

In a virtual press conference on a visit to the region, Mr Johnson said: "It needs to be corrected, you can't have a situation in which soil or parcels or tractors with mud on their tyres or whatever are prevented from moving easily from one part of the UK to another - it's all one United Kingdom.''

He said the protocol was as an act of "good neighbourliness'' by the UK towards Ireland and the EU to stop goods moving into the single market in an uncontrolled way''.

Mr Johnson said the protocol was necessitating more processes and checks than it should and that is why the Government moved to delay its implementation until longer-term solutions are found with the EU.

"What I didn't want to see was loads of checks on stuff going from GB to NI in such a way as to interrupt trade and to confuse and irritate people,'' he said.

"I didn't want to see barriers to the circulation of sausages and tractors with mud on their tyres and all the rest of it, and nor did I think that would be necessary and I think that's why we put in the easements we have, because I think it's sensible for there to be some balance in this and I think there's a commonsensical way forward and that's what we want to have.''