Jim Allister, leader and sole assembly member of the Traditional Unionist Voice, has been trying to raise the alarm about some little-noticed "small print" in last week's EU-UK draft Withdrawal Agreement. Whether alarm is justified depends on your political perspective, but Allister has certainly spotted something worth attention.
Within the text highlighted in green – the parts fully agreed by London and Brussels – is provision to add six new areas of North-South co-operation to the 12 contained in the Belfast Agreement.
Those six areas are: energy, telecommunications, broadcasting, justice and security, higher education and sport.
Although this is part of the “backstop”– the fallback position if negotiations fail to produce an alternative – it is oddly incidental to it.
Protecting North-South co-operation and the Belfast Agreement are core aims of the backstop, but the key means to do so are full alignment with the customs union and single market. The six new areas scarcely relate to such trading concerns, and stand alone in their own separate article in the draft Withdrawal Agreement which can survive regardless of any negotiating outcome.
North-South co-operation was a battleground in the 1998 negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement, not to mention the rock on which the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement foundered
London and Brussels might agree an alternative, but they appear to have agreed this already, or at least rather readily.
Extraordinary
The same applies to the Common Travel Area, the only other green-highlighted topic in the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The Common Travel Area has never been particularly contentious – Brussels has always been happy to let it continue and leave London and Dublin to manage it. Bolting on new areas of North-South co-operation is a different matter, and the way this is suggested is extraordinary.
The 12 existing areas under the Belfast Agreement, which include transport, tourism, education and health, are managed by the North-South Ministerial Council and its six cross-Border bodies, such as InterTrade Ireland and the Food Safety Promotion Board. Brussels intends the new areas to be slotted into this system, which is controversial enough.
North-South co-operation was a battleground in the 1998 negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement, not to mention the rock on which the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement foundered.
The 12 areas that made it into the 1998 deal were specifically listed. While the cross-Border bodies were not listed or limited in number, the mechanism and schedule for their creation had to be set out, along with a requirement they be agreed between Belfast, Dublin and London.
So, for the European Commission to propose more drives a coach and horses through the Belfast Agreement, supposedly in the name of protecting it – and that is true even if the commission is acting at Dublin's behest and with London's complicity.
Oversight bodies
Worse still, in terms of the integrity of the Belfast Agreement, two new oversight bodies are created. A Joint Committee of London and Brussels will keep North-South co-operation under "constant review" and set up a Specialised Committee to make recommendations for further areas of co-operation.
With the North-South Ministerial Council suspended due to the lack of Stormont ministers, these committees could be the only show in town.
Another possibility is that nationalists have begun believing Brexit is about to prise Northern Ireland out of the UK virtually overnight, rendering tedious negotiating details irrelevant
All this will operate “in full respect of [EU] law”, and while that law may not apply within Northern Ireland post-Brexit, in practice the European Court of Justice would end up arbitrating disputes – and London has green-highlighted every word of it.
Why has this not caused unionist consternation?
The DUP must see it as entirely tied up with the backstop, and the party does not believe Brexit will end in that kind of disaster.
Unionists have also become relaxed about North-South co-operation since the Belfast Agreement, having watched it turn from their apparent nemesis into a damp squib. Dublin has shown little interest in it, and no interest in paying for it. Unionist sabotage of cross-Border institutions through active indifference has proved barely necessary.
Perhaps a better question is why there is no nationalist elation.
Dublin has not trumpeted the six new areas, and Sinn Féin has claimed no credit for them, yet they look like a wish-list of nationalist ambition. Sport, broadcasting and universities hold huge all-Ireland cultural significance, telecommunications brings in new media, while justice and security promises a layer of accountability over British rule. If nothing else, Dublin has shown some gumption.
Unionist cynicism
Nationalists may share unionist cynicism at the potential of North-South co-operation along the Belfast Agreement model.
Another possibility is that nationalists have begun believing Brexit is about to prise Northern Ireland out of the UK virtually overnight, rendering tedious negotiating details irrelevant. This is a fond hope, and lapsing into it instead of paying attention is a classic nationalist failing.
The likeliest outcome of Brexit is a looser UK union with new all-Ireland arrangements, but those arrangements will have to be understood and worked to deliver.
The Irish Government has presumably given this a great deal of thought.But it faces an uphill task, while nobody in Belfast, apart from Allister, seems to care.