Brexit: What will next chapter of UK-EU relations bring for NI?

Those arrangements preserve an open goods border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, at the cost of new controls on goods coming from the rest of the UK.

The DUP ended its two-year boycott of devolved government in early 2024 and with Stormont back Brexit was no longer at the centre of local politics.

A vote by the Stormont Assembly at the end of December means that the special Brexit deal for Northern Ireland will continue to apply for at least another four years.

Brexit remains an issue to be sensitively managed and a series of problems to be solved but most of the political heat has gone.

Even when unionist parties triggered the Stormont Brake in an attempt to block a new EU regulation from applying in NI it was met with a low-key response from nationalism and the UK government.

An Irish Sea border remains, albeit in a modified and simplified state compared to the original 2019 deal.

The DUP returned to the NI Executive in February having agreed the Safeguarding the Union paper with the UK government.

That was largely a repackaging of 2023’s Windsor Framework, which sought to simplify the processes for moving goods from Great Britain to NI.

It was Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s deal and he boasted that it would take away the post-Brexit border between GB and NI.

After the shock of Donaldson’s arrest and resignation in March, his successor conceded that the deal had been oversold and the Irish Sea border still exists.