Mr. Gerry Harrahill:

It is really important that everybody understands that the agreement reached on 24 December did not in any sense do away with or lessen the obligation on and responsibility of Ireland to operate fully in accordance with the customs code and to protect the Single Market and the customs union. The agreement had the very important benefit of dealing with the question of tariffs, in particular with regard to UK originating goods. Essentially, all of the other pieces were already very clear that customs formalities would apply. In all of our engagement with trade, we made this very clear from the very start. It is very important that everybody understands this.

Another part of the question was with regard to giving greater visibility. We have just put this in place in the past week for hauliers. It is particularly beneficial in that if people know they have three different consignments on a truck and they are not clear whether all of these have cleared or not, then by looking up the MRN facility that we have now made available, they will know whether they are red, green or orange routed.

It will not necessarily solve the problem if they are red or orange routed, but at least it will mean a driver will not turn up to collect an unaccompanied trailer when something is clearly not ready to leave the port. That is already in place. One of the options we are looking at is to see how we can build on that and if there is anything else that we can do to provide greater transparency and information to the haulier without, as Ms O'Neill stated, breaching commercial sensitivity on some of these issues.