Mr. Barclay Bell:

In that situation, animal health and plant health requires an all-island policy. The Border does not recognise TB or whatever issue. There has to be that sort of freedom that animals can cross. When one thinks back to when there was a hard border, animals moved fairly freely when one thinks about the number of cattle that would have come up to the North for finishing or whatever. There was a fairly free movement of cattle then but, as we outlined in our initial presentation, there has to be some thinking done around how we can have an all-island plant and animal health programme in the future. If my colleague, Mr. Wesley Aston, wants to butt in at any stage, he should do so.

Senator O'Reilly mentioned the possibility of a special deal for Ireland and how that arrangement might look east-west or North-South, for that matter. There has to be some imaginative thinking around that. The east-west arrangement is equally as important as the North-South arrangement. There does not look to be any clear thinking about that now and perhaps that cannot move on quickly until our own local politicians get involved. All this relates to there being a political vacuum at the moment and we find it difficult to talk to the right people. So far, in London, we have spoken to the Department of Exiting the EU and to Andrea Leadsom in the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We have not yet had access to Liam Fox. The National Farmers Union in England and Wales has had access to Liam Fox and the Department of International Trade, but at this stage we have not had access to Liam Fox. He is a man we would like to get to talk to and this goes back to the point regarding what they are thinking about international trade and trade deals. Are they going to rush off to sign deals with other countries, maybe other Commonwealth countries? It is key that we get some insight into the thinking around international trade.

The Senator mentioned milk. Was it around the costs?