Mr. Liam Irwin:

We are doing work but we are not specifically doing any work with the UK at this stage. Clearly, any negotiation will be the between the European Union and the UK. We are not in any form of negotiation or even having any discussion with the UK at this point. What we are doing is scenario planning and looking at what the options may be. Much of that will clearly depend on what form of future arrangements will take place. It can be expected that the UK will be outside the Single Market and almost certainly outside the customs union. Assuming the UK is outside the customs union, it will be a third country for customs purposes. We are working on that likely assumption and within that there is a very broad spectrum of a very close trade arrangement with the European Union. Clearly, it could be much worse but we hope that will not be the case.

We are doing a lot of work. In the first instance, one thing we are examining in very close detail at present is our IT infrastructure. The number and the value of customs declarations – the number even more so than the value of customs - will clearly increase, possibly by a factor of ten. Therefore, our IT systems need to be examined for scalability, and we are doing that. As it happens, those systems are being reviewed in any event in the context of the UCC, the union customs code.