Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

All of this obviously makes sense. I do not think anyone would have thought about pilotage exemption certificates or anything like it when the Brexit vote went through initially but this is the madness we have to deal with. Is it the case that the Interbus Agreement will not kick in until the middle of next year?

The Interbus Agreement already exists and is made up of two parts. It covers occasional services such as bringing people to concerts and travelling from Belfast to Dublin, Derry to Dublin or whatever. The intention of the UK, as far as we know, is to accede to that. The UK must sign up to it this month for it to take effect on 1 January. The UK's membership takes effect on the first day of the third month after they sign. In our contacts with them they have made it clear to us and, I think, to the European Commission that they do intend signing. If they do that this month then from 1 January they will have acceded and the Interbus Agreement will take effect for them but only cover occasional services.

There was originally a protocol. Originally, four states, including the European Union, had to sign up. The European Union was the only one that signed up so the protocol fell. That has been renegotiated in Europe and it is now going to go, as far as I can see, to the October Transport Council to take effect again but it still needs three contracting parties, one of which will be the EU, to bring it into effect. My best guess is that it will really not come into effect until the middle of next year, and that is the one that covers regular and special regular services. In other words, the X3 service from Derry to Dublin or the ones that cross the Border around Donegal and so on.