Protocol - ​Reducing the risk, banking the reward

I had the genuine privilege to meet one of the astronauts from the Apollo programme - James Irwin, grandson of emigrants from Pomeroy in Co Tyrone – one of just a dozen human beings who have stepped onto the Moon. Of the many questions I wanted to ask, the leading one was about ‘risk’; venturing into unknown territory, in a 100% oxygen environment, loaded with massively explosive rocket fuel, to leave the ‘home planet’ on a round trip of over half a million miles, and expect to come back safely to Earth. How, I wanted to know, did they begin to understand, then quantify, then mitigate the risk?

“Yes; we knew it was risky!” That was the light-hearted reply I got at first; but as the conversation went deeper, the rigour, the drive, the professionalism, and the clear-sighted focus on the reward shone through. There was an awareness of the risk, leading to continuous assessment, and a process of mitigation as the entire team strove to make spaceflight as technically safe as possible. But what made the programme so inspirational for me was the determination to accept and embrace the remaining unmitigated risks purely because the rewards merited it. As a twelve year old, that future-astronaut told his mother of his ambition to go to the Moon. Less than three decades later, he had achieved it. I don’t deny I found his ambition inspirational when, as a young teenager myself, I had my conversation with him and explored the concept of ‘risk and reward’ and learned lessons I have never forgotten.

Those lessons can be used to assess actions closer to home, as we watch our politicians weigh up ‘risk and reward’ when it comes to the UK-EU trading relationship, through the prism of Northern Ireland. The EU needs to protect its Single Market - but must balance any perceived risks with the need to ensure that the process “should impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities”, as committed in the opening text of the NI Protocol.

If we take the Apollo spirit of continuous assessment and ongoing mitigation as a wise approach to an evolving situation, then the past two years of Protocol operation have provided plenty of evidence to use in evaluating whether we can expect to reap reward or loss. The Taoiseach recently opined that two years’ operation of a light-touch version of the Protocol, mitigated by Grace Periods for supermarket goods, parcels, medicines, second hand cars and more, hadn’t seen the sky fall in. All parties have been aware of potential risks, have assessed them, and applied mitigations; and through this, the reality of risks have proved to be less than feared, the mitigations have been beneficial, knowledge has been gained, the loss reduced, and the reward increased.

There was a changing view of risk over time in NASA’s space programmes. The concept of ‘risk’ itself was acknowledged as a problem in the early days, when estimations were almost debilitatingly high. Similarly, that excessive designation of ‘risk’ also permeated the language and consequent operation of the Protocol. Goods coming from GB that theoretically might transit into the Republic were automatically defined, and taxed, as being “at risk” when perhaps a more balanced view could have described the risk with more subtlety as being ‘high’ or ‘low’. Just as the consideration of risk matured in the space programme so, too, there seems to a be a growing acceptance amongst those close to the Protocol discussions that ‘risk’ has been over-cooked. The spirit of having minimal impact on everyday life was initially swamped by those whose role was to be aware of risk and to assess it, rather than mitigate it or, dare I suggest, accept it and live with it.

Two years on, with the personalities changed, other international priorities emerging and, importantly, an evidence base that has raised almost no serious concerns about actual infringement of the Single Market, there is an opportunity for enlightened leadership that is determined to accept and embrace the remaining risks. The most effective mitigation will be by a wider adoption of trust, serving to break down the literal and metaphorical frontiers that the first interpretation of the Protocol sought so rigidly to establish and, instead, embracing the opportunities that lie beyond.