Mr. Gerry Harrahill:

The transit system is an area of shared interest and focus because the issue of transit arises in regard to traffic coming from the east to the land border or from the west through the UK land border.

The first significant thing that happened before Christmas was that the UK applied to be part of the common transit system. It has to be part of the system for transit to work. If we take a hypothetical situation of goods leaving Northern Ireland with the ultimate destination of mainland Britain, coming to Ireland through Dublin and back into the UK, what effectively happens is that - remembering that all of this is electronic - an additional declaration is filed in the transit system of which the UK authorities, the Irish authorities and the French authorities are seamlessly notified. As the goods move from Northern Ireland to Dublin and from Dublin to mainland Britain, there is an automatic process of notifications so that once the goods are put into the common transit system in Belfast, immediately the receipt point in mainland Britain is aware and is expecting the arrival of those goods. That is why the transit is so important for all of the member states and that is why it has been a key area of focus at EU level and even the European Commission sees it as important in terms of facilitating movements through the UK landbridge, whether that is from France to Ireland or Ireland to France.