Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney assured on Tuesday that the United Kingdom and the European Union would be able to reach a post-Brexit trade deal for Northern Ireland in 2022.
"There are encouraging signals from the British government that they are serious for the first time in many months about trying to work this out through dialogue and discussion... I think we can do that. I think we can do that before the end of the year," Coveney told local radio network Newstalk.
The remarks come after the recently elected British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed last month he preferred reaching an agreement on Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) more than applying trade rules independently from the bloc.
The NIP trading arrangement came into force at the start of last year as the outcome of the Brexit talks, allowing the transport of goods across the Irish land border without checks, but it has since been a subject of dispute between London and Brussels.
