Ms Carol Lynch:

One of the questions we are constantly asked by people involved in industry is, given that we do not know what the final agreement will be, whether there is any point in their preparing for it now. My response always is that there is an awful lot they could do right now. We are 80% sure what the final outcome will be, including that the United Kingdom will not be part of the customs union. Once it withdraws from it, there will be a domino effect. There will be a requirement to make import and export declarations. That is inevitable. To complete the information required, one will need to know the tariff classifications and be able to determine values, the consignee, the consigner and income terms. Taking the very basic building blocks of tariff classifications which lead to duty rates - even if there is no duty rate - there will still be a need to define the tariff classifications for the purposes of customs security. That in itself will take an awful lot of work. For example, a company with 6,000 part numbers will need to put in a place a mechanism to determine their classifications. Providing that information will be a requirement that will not change. Therefore, people will need to prepare for this in the next two years.

We also know that there will be a requirement to make a customs declaration on imports to and exports from Ireland to the United Kingdom. Therefore, companies will need to review their supply chains. A lot of companies, particularly Irish companies, were set up to trade in the Single Market; therefore, they are used to selling and buying in it. They were not set up with a model that involved trading outside the Single Market. It will be a huge learning curvem but two years will give them plenty of time. There is a significant amount of time remaining before anything will kick in, but if companies leave that work until the last six months, they will be under pressure. As I said, when asked by companies what they should do, given that we do not yet know what the final outcome will be, my response is always that we are 80% sure what the end result will be. The only thing we really do not know is whether there will be tariffs, but that issue can be dealt with near the end of the process. Every other piece of work has to be done now.