Ms Maree Gallagher:

I thank the committee for inviting the British Irish Chamber of Commerce to present to it. I am chair of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce agrifood committee and am a food lawyer. I am joined today by my colleague, Mr. Paul Lynam, head of sectoral policy with the chamber and acts as secretariat to the committee.

The British Irish Chamber of Commerce welcomes the announcement that there has been an agreed form of wording on the Irish Border. I look forward to hearing more detail in that regard. The issue of the Border and cross-Border trade is of huge significant to our members in Ireland and the UK.

For the benefit of those who do not know it, the British Irish Chamber of Commerce is the only organisation representing business activities with interests across the two islands. Our raison d'êtreis to champion, protect and grow the trade between the UK and Ireland, which is worth in excess of €65 billion a year and sustains more than 400,000 jobs, evenly spread across Britain and Ireland.

In addition to Brexit, the chamber operates across nine policy strands, including the agrifood sector, through its policy committee. This committee is focused on maintaining and protecting the critically important UK-Ireland agrifood trade, which evidently faces a clear and present danger as a consequence of the Brexit vote. Members of the committee include household names such as ABP, Bord Bia, Dawn Farms, Diageo, Greencore, Fyffes and Tesco. We have a very broad membership of companies affected that are very active with the committee. I do not need to remind members of the importance of this trade to the sector and the Irish economy as a whole or the potential damage that tariffs, non-tariff barriers or disruption to the all-island sector would cause. The Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine's 2017 report covers all these facts in detail. My presentation will focus on our recent submission looking at challenges for the European Union, the current state of negotiations, responding to the Brexit challenge and the chamber's recommendations.

I will first turn to the challenges for the EU as we see them. While Brexit sent an initial shockwave through the European Union, anti-EU sentiment has not spread to Ireland, as many had initially feared. Despite the well-publicised "Irexit" conference last year, Ireland has maintained one of the highest ratings of satisfaction with the EU, consistently polling over 90%. For many EU states Brexit is not the all-consuming issue it is in Ireland, with the migration crisis, the economic difficulties of some Mediterranean states, the tensions with Russia and the stand-off with Orbán in Hungary all taking various levels of prominence across the Continent. That said, the EU has been steadfast in its support for Ireland and the Irish backstop. This position has been reiterated to the chamber in its numerous meetings across Europe. It is this public show of solidarity that is reciprocated with the Irish public's support for membership of the EU. The chamber's view has always been that Ireland's future lies in the heart of Europe while maintaining the closest possible relationship to Ireland's most important trading partner, the UK. As a country, we do not need to define ourselves in terms of our relationship with anyone else, whether it be the UK, the US or the EU. We must, however, remain vigilant to ensure we manage and contribute positively to these distinct and mutually beneficial relationships that we currently enjoy. As a chamber, that is what we have been striving to do in our ongoing work across the Irish Sea with our UK members and our wider UK network.

I now turn to the current state of the Brexit negotiations. As the negotiations continue, we as a chamber are extremely concerned that greater progress has not been achieved in these talks. We had hoped for a breakthrough by the October summit of the European Council but, unfortunately, this did not materialise. Of course, developments today may have changed this since I put together these notes, but certainly as and from this morning, an emergency summit in November is now looking unlikely, meaning that the European Council summit in December will likely be the final opportunity to secure a deal. The chamber has consistently warned of the dangers of a no-deal Brexit and of the importance of delivering a transition period to provide adequate time for businesses to prepare for any new arrangements. The chamber shares the view of the committee, that if an extension to Article 50 is needed to ensure a mutually beneficial agreement is reached between the UK and the EU, then the UK should request it and the EU 27 should consent to it. A no-deal outcome would be wholly unsatisfactory to businesses, which would face the prospect of severely disrupted supply chains, new barriers to trade, and significant cost increases that will impact on growth and jobs. While we believe that a deal preventing the UK from crashing out of the EU remains possible, we are advising our members to intensify their preparations for a no-deal scenario and providing them with the relevant information to help them to do so.

As for responding to the Brexit challenge, and as outlined in our submission to the committee, the chamber understands the need to diversify our markets to expand the reach of Irish agrifood products. Many of our members already export throughout Europe and beyond and, as this committee knows, our reliance on the UK as an export market has steadily fallen to 35%. However, we reiterate our caution that "diversification" cannot be seen as a panacea to Brexit. Not only does the UK market share similar tastes with the Irish market as well as language, law and culture, but Irish companies have also invested considerable resources and time in gaining a foothold in the UK market that cannot be easily replicated in a European or external market. Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, the UK will remain an important market for Irish agrifood exports. Protecting Ireland's market share in the UK is therefore essential for the sector. In this regard, the chamber wishes to acknowledge the work of State agencies in preparing for Brexit, notably for the agrifood sector. Bord Bia has actively engaged with its clients in the sector by providing supply chain workshops, customs training and currency risk training, as well as ongoing engagement and support. We have also found that the Bord Bia Brexit barometer has been a useful tool for the sector in gauging its preparedness for Brexit. For the chamber's part, we held a major conference in September which brought together key stakeholders from across the sector, including the Minister, Deputy Creed; Tara McCarthy from Bord Bia; Patrick Coveney from Greencore; and Pamela Byrne, the CEO of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, FSAI. In addition, we have developed a Brexit toolkit, hosted regular briefings for our members and liaised directly with the UK authorities. From our interactions with our agrifood members, we can inform the committee that the vast majority of the larger companies are taking the necessary steps within their power to prepare for Brexit but the lack of clarity and certainty as to what Brexit will mean still poses considerable problems for businesses, particularly smaller businesses.

I now turn to the chamber's recommendations. Regardless of the preparations Irish agribusiness can make, the UK's departure from the EU will have a significant impact on the sector. This impact will likely be catastrophic if there is a no-deal, disorderly Brexit. Extracting the pertinent points from the chamber's policy papers, we make the following recommendations for the committee's consideration. The Government should advocate to the European Commission for the establishment of a Brexit mitigation fund in conjunction with temporary relaxation of state aid rules in sectors and regions most acutely impacted by Brexit. The chamber has seen at first hand the work of State agencies such as Bord Bia, Enterprise Ireland and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland in not only preparing their clients for the threats associated with Brexit but also assisting them to identify new opportunities that have been emerging. To its credit, since the Brexit referendum result, the Government has broadly increased the budgets of State agencies in addition to Brexit-specific initiatives. This must be maintained. In addition, Government supports should be simplified. The Government should work with business representative organisations, such as the chamber and the Irish Exporters Association, to review the grant process from application phase to reimbursement. State supports should also be open to all businesses exposed to the UK market, and the business and stakeholder organisations should be fully mobilised to ensure that businesses are aware of their eligibility for support. We also recommend that export certificates for agrifood exporters be simplified. As it stands, the export system administered by the HSE for food products of non-animal origin is inefficient and is frustrating exporters, which is leading to delays in exports. This is particularly relevant for agrifood exporters seeking new market access. A more streamlined system should be put in place to ensure that exporters are fully supported in their endeavours and not hindered by red tape. We have also recommended the introduction of a customs voucher scheme. To alleviate the burden I have described, the Government should introduce a simplified customs voucher scheme offering up to €5,000 in support to Irish companies that export to and import from the UK and which will be working with customs procedures possibly for the first time. We also recommend an increase in support for the regulatory enforcement agencies in Ireland, specifically the FSAI. Ireland's official controls of food will be under increased scrutiny and severely stretched in a post-Brexit world, regardless of the type of Brexit. Ensuring we have a robust, independent regulator capable of monitoring the safety, quality and origin of food produced in Ireland, food destined for export and, more importantly, imported food will be key to Ireland's future ability to market itself as the food island.

The chamber lobbied for the introduction for a loan scheme similar to the future growth loan scheme and therefore we welcomed the Minister’s announcement in budget 2019. Members believe that the interest rate applied should be 2.95%, the rate applied to the previous agribusiness loan scheme.