Mr. Eugene Drennan:

Due to the situation the Deputy outlined, we have called for an independent body or person to overlook this because our experience has not been what has been outlined to the committee. There are links in the chain that were outlined and that are missing and that is why we have called for this. I will address the matter of drivers first and then I move on to the other points.

Drivers come to different terminals. They go in with their phones, leave their phone numbers and then they wait in no-man's land for information. Much of that information has not been forthcoming as quickly as has been indicated and it is wrong that they cannot leave the terminals. Customs will reply that a driver is allowed to leave the terminal - but he cannot leave without his truck. Most of these are international drivers and everything they require for life is in their vehicles. It is said that we can swap them in and out but we cannot do so as a result of Covid. We cannot swap drivers in and out unless they live in Dublin. A haulier from the country cannot have people running up the road to swap in and out. If customs or the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine want the goods, we will leave the goods with them and come back to collect them whenever they are finished doing whatever their due diligence is. They are virtually keeping the drivers prisoner. It is not good enough and it is not fair.

I turn to the way the system is working, particularly in the context of red-routing. I will address the agriculture input first because that is causing some extra dimensions. Mr. Savage very correctly outlined what has to be done. When doing it, however, if a company is bringing up these declarations for agriculture and there is also a phytosanitary connection to it, a person has to carry out three uploads on the computer and make about six declarations. A lot of the product that comes from agriculture is repetitive. It will be the same product tomorrow as it is today. Declarations cost money. We are talking about the costs here and how it works. The declarations at the start have caused food to be dumped. They are probably saying that there is no food dumped in Ireland. That may be but it was turned back and sent abroad. The timeline has been missed and food has been dumped. It goes to the core of Irish people, dating back to the Famine, that we do not want food to be dumped. It is short-term life or just-in-time produce. When we called for an easement, it was not possible to get one as the customs code had to be protected, yet Belfast has an easement on that type of ready-prepared food. They also have one on the parcel-type service with DPD delivery.

Many people got caught out on this at the turn of the year because they had ordered stuff for Christmas and the backlog was so great that they did not get it. They fell into the crack of being caught in the new system and they did not get their deliveries. When they did, VAT, duties and whatnot were due on them. This happened to such an extent that international freight people withdrew from the Irish market for a week because it was so bad. That is on the parcel side. Also, the major international freight agents got so frustrated, they withdrew from doing Irish-English work for three, four or five days. They and their staff could not handle it because it was so cumbersome. The system is correct; they are trying to do all their protocols. I agree with that. Even though we have had a great deal of engagement, as was indicated, the nature of that was to tell us what is coming down the line and what to do. We did not see our involvement or our proposals reflected in the results.

Some of the stuff that was indicated to us never happened. I wish to acknowledge the ladies from customs who participated in our engagements. They battled hard and worked hard. I am not going to name them but I would like to acknowledge them.