Mr. Simon McKeever:

I thank the Chairman and members for the invitation to come before the committee. I am just going to say a few words before I hand over to Mr. Howard Knott, our director of trade and facilitation, in order to provide a bit of context about our organisation. The Irish Exporters Association, IEA, is a national membership organisation and represents small, one-man operations right up to some of the largest FDI-based companies in Ireland, many of which are engaged in exporting and importing. In addition, there are those companies which import and add value to products for re-exporting them. Many of our members are logistics companies, while others are involved with national infrastructure around exporting, be it the airports, the ports or the rail network. Our view is informed by the way in which the organisation is constructed. We previously made submissions in respect of Competition in the Irish Ports Sector, which was published in 2013 by the Competition Authority, the national ports policy and the scheme of the Bill before the committee. In addition, we have issued a lot of publications in this area. These include our Trade and Transport Analysis.

I will now hand over to Mr. Knott, who is our director of trade facilitation and who is involved in all of our activities in respect of transportation, logistics, ports, harbours, rail, freight and air.