If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s the futility of having two strategies on one island. While islands such as New Zealand and Taiwan have kept the virus under control, the lack of alignment on either side of the border in Ireland did not help curtail the disease.
Ian Marshall, a beef farmer from Markethill in Co Armagh, and a former president of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, knows all about the importance of alignment between the two jurisdictions. “It’s difficult if you have a policy that stops halfway across the field and then introduce a different policy in the other half,” he told Ulster Business.