Dr. Martina Lawless:

It is a little difficult to answer those questions because we know there will be some level of documentation required to declare that goods coming into the UK from the rest of Britain will not be sold on. If they are sold on, the tariffs have to be paid, and if they are not, either the tariffs can be claimed back or paid later. At this point, it is unclear what level of documentation and checking will be required and to what extent that will be a burden on businesses. It is certainly an increase in cost for businesses.

Looking at the types of firms that trade in Northern Ireland, and we have done some work on this with InterTradeIreland, it is typically the larger firms in Northern Ireland that do most of the trade with Britain and the smaller firms that do a lot of cross-Border trade, which tends to be regular and frequent transactions of quite a low value. The administrative burden being on the sea border would probably largely impact the larger firms. They make up more of Northern Ireland's overall exports but it tends to be more concentrated in the larger exporters, whereas the smaller exporters, such as firms with fewer than 20 employees, tend to export only to Ireland. More of that administrative burden, therefore,will fall on the larger firms that are probably more able to cope with it and the smaller firms will be kept out of that loop.

It very much depends on how the documentation checks are put into place, however. It seemed there was even some confusion in the days after the deal was made on whether the checks would operate in both directions on the Irish Sea or just on goods coming from Britain to Northern Ireland. There is still a lot of uncertainty on exactly how they will be put in place.