County Down bus attackers reportedly referenced Northern Ireland Protocol

A bus was set alight this morning in Newtownards, County Down after it was hijacked by two armed, masked men.

Northern Ireland’s infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon told the BBC that the men “muttered something about the protocol” during the attack.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) had previously vowed to withdraw from the Northern Irish Executive by 1 November if Westminster were not tackling the Protocol.

Following today’s attack, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said “secured through political action and not violence”.

On Friday Sir Jeffrey told the BBC that his threat to withdraw from the region’s government depended on whether the UK government was “taking decisive action” which he said he thinks they now are.

There were no passengers on board at the time of the attack.

Ms Mallon, Deputy Leader of the Irish nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) , told BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan Show, “You’ve done nothing in terms of the protocol, “All you have done is threaten and intimidate and terrify a bus driver who is a father, a brother, and deprived your own community of a critical bus service.”

Talks between Brexit Minister Lord Frost and Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission Vice-President on Friday failed to produce any new agreement.

Lord Frost said earlier this month that the European Union would be making a ‘historic misjudgement’ if it wasn’t prepared to make changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

He also reaffirmed his comments made to the House of Lords in September, in which he said that it would be a “significant mistake” to assume the UK would not trigger Article 16 – the part of the Northern Ireland Protocol which permits elements of the deal being temporarily suspended if they are evidenced to be causing “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade.”

The UK’s proposed changes to the deal include changing the legal basis of the Protocol to that of a Treaty governed by international law, not EU law policed by the European Court of Justice. The current Protocol, he said, meant the EU could “make laws which apply in Northern Ireland without any kind of democratic scrutiny or discussion.”

The Protocol was implemented to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the wake of Brexit by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods. Many unionist groups say the Protocol undermines Northern Ireland’s place in the UK by placing it in the EU’s single market.