Sir, – Edwin Poots is setting a handy benchmark for himself. He tells his people that Dublin is taking food off the tables of Northern Ireland and is denying medicines to its hospitals. In the very likely events that people there don't starve and local hospitals don't run out of medical supplies, he can claim a triumph, even if nothing is done about the dastardly protocol (News, May 30th). Do you mind the cunning of him?
His recent comments echo his earlier warning that hospitals and schools in Northern Ireland are at risk of running out of food due to the implementation of the protocol (News, January 14th). One might think that the threatened shortages of food and medicines in schools and hospitals would cause cross-community outrage but that does not appear to be the case.
Sammy Wilson MP says that the unionist hand is weakened in the 2024 review of the protocol because “the Alliance Party, SDLP, Sinn Féin, the Greens and People Before Profit all agree with the protocol” and its continuation beyond 2024 will not require cross-community backing, a euphemism for the traditional unionist veto (News, March 1st).
I am struggling to reconcile these two positions.
:fill(white):background_color(white)/static.themebuilder.aws.arc.pub/irishtimes/1647534191476.png)
It strikes me that a political platform which advocates starvation in schools and medicine-free hospitals in what Mr Poots calls “this great wee country” will have limited electoral appeal.
And yet Sammy Wilson contends that every non-unionist party, representing a majority of the voters in Northern Ireland, supports the protocol which threatens the effects described by his new party leader.
This is what Myles would have described as a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, an insoluble pancake . – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Mooncoin,
Co Kilkenny.