Aoife Moore: The world now knows that Britain under the Conservatives does what it wants
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After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, US President Bill Clinton warned: "In the days to come there may be those who will try to undermine this great achievement."
He was warning of Loyalist paramilitaries at the time, and could not have known that one of the main protectors of the precious peace process would one day be the one who threatened to bring it crashing down.
British foreign secretary Liz Truss has tabled legislation which, according to the EU and Simon Coveney, breaks international law, puts the peace process at risk, alienates 51 of 90 elected members of Stormont and placates a minority of people in the North and then claims it's for the good of the people of Northern Ireland.
There is no doubt that a Stormont stalemate hurts the public and the peace process, but what hurts trust in the peace process is treating one minority group of people as more important than the rest of those democratically elected.
Each of the other Northern Ireland parties have made it clear that the Tories are only interested in speaking with the DUP, who are holding the Northern Executive to ransom in their refusal to nominate a Deputy First Minister, meaning £300m waiting to help the Northern Irish economy cannot be spent and the crisis in the health service will continue unabated without a draft budget to be approved.
One senior figure from the Department of Foreign Affairs said the British are mixing up the principle of consent and the cross-community majority cited in the agreement as a way to justify their actions in placating the DUP.
It has perhaps demonstrated to the entire world though, what many people in Ireland already knew — that Britain under the Conservatives does what it wants, regardless of international law, or humiliation on a global scale.
One senior political figure said upon the mention of Boris Johnson's name: "Don't even mention those two words to me," which accurately reflects much of the mood around Stormont and Leinster House, after the so-called guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, the Prime Minister of Britain and Northern Ireland, said breaking international law was "not a big deal".
The fact of the matter is the protocol works for Northern Ireland, the North is actually outperforming every region in the UK economically, except for the City of London, due to the fact of the North's prime position between the EU and Britain.
What will happen in the days and months after this bill is published is that economic performance will begin to suffer. The long years of economic wilderness for the North, which were beginning to come to an end, will likely rear their ugly head again as the EU is forced to retaliate amid rumblings of a trade war.
It is easy, especially in the Republic, to tune out of matters of the North and the Conservative government, as we shuffle from global crises to global crises, but it is likely the entirety of Europe will feel some kind of effect of these actions if the EU is forced to respond.
What happens in Westminster will have far-reaching consequences, likely to hit us in the pocket, amid an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
However, like the conflict in the North, that for so long chewed up so many and spat them out, it is the people of the North who will suffer the most. Peace is a process and should be protected, and until some people in the North and in Westminster come to realise that you cannot eat a flag, more of us will go hungry.