Mr. Trevor Donnellan:

There are two dimensions to it. We have a level of trade in terms of finished agricultural products with both Northern Ireland and the UK. The market for Irish agrifood in Northern Ireland is important. What is more critical is the integration of businesses north and south of the Border. Fore example, there is a significant volume of trade in live animals between the North and the Republic and vice versa, predominantly for slaughter. A large volume of milk comes from Northern Ireland into the Republic to be processed. This creates problems on both sides of the Border regarding what happens if, suddenly, the movement of milk or live animals is impeded.

What will happen to the milk the Northern Irish farmers are producing? Approximately one third of the milk produced in Northern Ireland comes South of the Border to be processed. Northern Ireland farmers would potentially need more milk processing facilities in place to deal with it. It seems problematic for the Republic to continue to take this milk, given that there is no way of segregating it and saying it is produced in Northern Ireland and is non-EU milk. From talking to the industry, this seems to be a difficult issue.

There is a problem with live animals, given that there is only so much slaughter capacity and if animals cannot cross the Border, there may be an issue of whether additional slaughtering capacity will need to be put in place to address it. In the poultry sector, all the hatchlings in the country are produced in Northern Ireland and come South of the Border to be grown. There is a very high level of integration regarding agricultural raw materials and food ingredients. Given that we have an all-island agrifood sector, the implications of Brexit are negative.