Brexit: Arlene Foster sees ‘gateway of opportunity’ in UK-EU trade deal

Video caption Arlene Foster: Brexit is now a ‘gateway of opportunity’

Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster has said there “is a gateway of opportunity for the whole of the UK and for NI” after the UK-EU trade deal.

MPs last week approved the post-Brexit trade deal in a parliamentary vote.

Mrs Foster told The Andrew Marr Show it was “important” in NI’s centenary year to “take the opportunities that are there for all of our people”.

She also said the deal dealt with “some of the great difficulties that there are with the (NI) Protocol”.

The purpose of the Northern Ireland Protocol is to prevent a hardening of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

It does that by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods and by having Northern Ireland apply EU customs rules at its ports.

Mrs Foster said her party “didn’t want the protocol but it is here”.

“I have to mitigate against that and my job from now on is to mitigate against those excesses and to hold the government to account for what they claimed would be unfettered access from Northern Ireland into Great Britain, our largest market of course, and also from Great Britain into Northern Ireland,” Mrs Foster added.

The Brexit transition period ended at 23:00 GMT on 31 December, with Northern Ireland’s ports now using border control posts (BCPs) to check many food products entering from Great Britain.

A small number of lorries were delayed at the new BCPs following the end of the transition period on Thursday night.