Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It certainly has been a matter of concern for our dairy industry. Obviously, we are an all-island dairy market and producer. It is entirely integrated. That is one of our strengths and, likewise, that feeds through to our dairy processors, who have a lot of mixed milk coming into their operations. It is something they were concerned about and something that I, as Minister, and the Department raised as part of the Brexit negotiations. The terms and conditions of many of the third-country free trade agreements that were in place and that predated Brexit had already been set. The fact that Northern Ireland remains part of the UK customs territory is central to defining the origin of that milk in some of those free trade agreements. I am very committed to trying to resolve this in time but it will involve having to look to the renegotiation in due course of those third-country agreements in order for the issue to be fully resolved. Thankfully, since the start of the year, things seem to have been operating reasonably well so far. This is not an issue for many of our main markets outside of the European Union. Within the EU and the UK it is not an issue either because milk can be traded freely, but it certainly is an issue for some third-country traders. I will ask Mr. Savage, the assistant secretary, to comment further on this issue. He has put a lot of time and effort into the technical detail of this.