The unionist community needs to ‘confront and face down’ those responsible for intimidating workers carrying out Brexit checks at Northern Irish ports, according to the Sinn Féin leader.

Physical checks on food and animal products have been suspended at Belfast and Larne ports following an “upsurge in sinister and menacing behaviour” recently.

It comes after graffiti targeting the Northern Ireland protocol and describing port staff as “targets” appeared in the area.

Workers have also voiced concern over people seen taking down number plate details at the ports.

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said it is essential that the intimidation is “absolutely condemned” right across the political spectrum.

“Any suggestion, much less any actual intimidatory actions are to be absolutely condemned,” she said.

“They are totally and utterly unacceptable and I think it is very important there is a united front and a united voice from everybody right across the political spectrum – but particularly from unionism.

“Tactics like this, where graffiti goes on the wall threatening or intimating threats towards workers in Larne or Belfast, unionism needs to confront that and face it down.

“It should not be used as a means or cover for attempting to unwind and undo the protocol or the protections for the island of Ireland.”

Graffiti reading 'No Irish Sea border' near Belfast City centre, 02-02-2021. Image: David Young/PA Wire/PA Images

The Northern Ireland protocol was included in the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to prevent the return of a hard border in Ireland by introducing some checks on goods arriving from Britain.

Deputy McDonald said the Northern Ireland Executive must now present a united front on the intimidation.

“On the one hand, clearly condemning any proposition of intimidation or threat to anybody, including people working at Larne and Belfast ports,” she said.

“We also need a clear understanding form everyone particularly from unionism that this tactic cannot and will not be used in an attempt to destabilise an arrangement that was very hard won.”

Border Force officers wait at a checking facility near Belfast Port (Images pixelated), 02-02-2021. Image: David Young/PA Wire/PA Images

She warned that those in Northern Ireland who championed Brexit can’t “have their cake and eat it” – noting that the protocol is not up for negotiation.

“Those in unionism that want to speak out of both sides of their mouth need to reflect that they championed Brexit, we are now living with the consequences of it and they need to accept, as democrats and elected leaders in particular, that the protocol was agreed, is in place and is there to protect all of us and our livelihoods,” she said.

Tension in the north over the protocol were further inflamed by the EUs threat to temporarily suspend it in a row over vaccine delivery.

Deputy McDonald said it was an “extraordinary blunder” by the European Commission.

“I think the proposed course of action by the Commission was extraordinary,” she said.

“The fact that they were proposing this course of action without consulting, or it seems informing, Dublin or Belfast or London for that matter or Michel Barnier, it seems, and his team, is extraordinary.

“It was an extraordinary blunder and the only saving grace is that it was stopped in its tracks.”

A P&O worker closes the gate on the European Causeway ferry from Scotland in the port of Larne, Northern Ireland, 02-02-2021. Image: Peter Morrison/AP/Press Association Images

She said the move “annoyed and startled” people right across Ireland and Britain

“We certainly did not need it but what we need even less now is any sense of a kind of a tit-for-tat dynamic, which is being proposed by some,” she said.

“That if Ursula von der Leyen or the Commission proposed triggering Article 16 and they stepped back that Boris Johnson should now follow suit.

“That is crazy. We are in very, very challenging and uncertain times in so many respects – primarily because of the COVID public health emergency. That last thing we need is further ingredients of instability so that is just absolutely wrongheaded.”

On Friday evening, the EU temporarily said it would prevent vaccines travelling from the bloc to Britain, using the north as a backdoor – effectively setting up a vaccine border in Ireland.

The European Commission rolled back on the plan later in the evening, following backlash from Dublin, London and Belfast.

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