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Matthew O'Toole Profile picture
Matthew O'Toole
@MatthewOToole2
Now: @sdlplive MLA for South Belfast | Leader of the Opposition @niassembly Former: civil servant & journalist. Future: A social democratic new Ireland
Feb 3, 2022 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
THREAD

DUP's '850m cost of Protocol' is a nonsense lie that needs nailed finally. It doesn't come from a peer reviewed study or govt data but... a Newsletter article.

Here is @gordonlyons1 flailing when pressed earlier and then falsely claiming it was from the Fiscal Council.. Utterly false. The Newsletter article was written by Esmond Birnie, an economist who *is* a member of the Fiscal Council - but the analysis is nothing to do with the Fiscal Council.

How do I know? I wrote to to the chair and he replied saying it had nothing to do with them👇
Feb 2, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Sorry to bore you with a thread, but we need to address the inaccurate, amped up talk of an 'economic United Ireland'.

Sadly it's a lie. Brexit means that in all areas not in the Protocol - and that includes fundamental areas - the north/south economies will *diverge*.. There is a huge list of areas which the Protocol does not cover and on which the UK-EU TCA is either silent or a huge retrenchment...

This includes all services (I.e. the large majority of both the UK and NI economies).

So: recognition of qualifications, data flows...
Jan 22, 2021 • 16 tweets • 7 min read
Two budgetary 💷 moments in NI this week, but there is minimal public understanding of what they mean - frankly there is limited *Assembly* understanding of what they mean.

Beneath the headline numbers, there are major issues.

Here is a thread unpacking some of them. What are these docs?

First, is the draft - I.e. not final yet - Executive Budget for the *next* financial year, 2021-22, starting in April.

Second, is the 'January Monitoring' round, which is the last opportunity to move around unspent money in *this* financial year, 2020/21...
Jul 27, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
🚨There's a scandalous silence about NI's preparations for Brexit. Both Westminster and the Assembly are going into recess with biz and society crying out for basic information. I've written to both Michael Gove and the first ministers asking for urgent clarity (1/5) More than two months have passed since Michael Gove published his threadbare command paper on the protocol. Since then, businesses have received minimal further information. What has changed is that Gove and his govt have ruled out an extension of the transition...
Apr 10, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
To understand why the UK failed to see the Brexit NI problem, it is worth asking why no one in London ever talks about John Hume.

Below is one of Ireland's most senior diplomats. Hume's legacy is central to how the Irish state has perceived itself since 1998 (GFA thread).. When RTE had a public vote less than a decade ago on Ireland's Greatest person, Hume beat Michael Collins, the man who won independence and founded the state. Hume is the moral and intellectual architect of the GFA, not David Trimble - who was courageous enough to do the deal...
Jul 2, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This meeting may be more important than Chequers. EU will probably accept a fudge on the future relationship that allows the Tories to remain unsplit until after next March (it will after all only be a pol declaration) but not will accept fudge on the Irish backstop (THREAD) People forget the EU has always seen withdrawal and the future as separate negotiations. The Irish border is the bit they demanded certainty on. And in order to get progress to trade talks, the UK agreed to a backstop (albeit with internal contradictions in the text)
Jun 6, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The de-othering of Northern Ireland happening in the rest of the UK (and the rest of Ireland - see increased Varadkar engagement) is a good thing in the long term. But it will be bumpy (1/) the reason NI is the central dilemma in Brexit is because it is a contested space in which the UK has consented to a slight smudging of sovereignty to accommodate its unique connection to another EU member state... (2/)
Nov 30, 2017 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Here is a problem with the DUP wanting 'no special arrangements for Northern Ireland': until Brexit they've been demanding nothing but that for decades (thread) In 2011 at the Treasury, I worked on the announcement of the reduction of long haul APD and it's devolution to Stormont. It temporarily kept a symbolic but unprofitable United airlines belfast-NY route open...