Ms Hazel Sheridan:

I thank the Minister and Senator Daly. In answer to the question about preparations for operation at full capacity, infrastructure, staffing and IT systems have been put in place at both Dublin Port, Rosslare Europort and at Dublin Airport. They have all been constructed based on analysis of 2019 and 2020 data flows. What has been put in place is capable of dealing with trade if it had remained the same as it did in 2019 and 2020.

At the same time it seems unlikely that that will be the case. This is the biggest change, as the Minister said, that the industry has had to undergo since 1993 and it is likely that it will result in changes to supply chains and to trade flows. However, the infrastructure, staff and IT systems are in place. As the Minister said, at the moment we are operating well within our capacity and, as the Senator referenced, that has been helpful in getting people up to speed with the requirements.

There was no way of testing what this was going to look like in reality because there was no way of asking businesses to complete customs formalities and SPS formalities ahead of 1 January. There was no way to test the capacity of the UK to issue heath certification or to test the capacity of people to understand what was needed on the certificates and all of those issues.

Unfortunately, there is no substitute for doing the business itself and that is the phase we are in. Certainly there is a lot of complexity in that and there is much learning for businesses, for the Department of Agriculture and the Marine and for other agencies, as to how we can improve things and how we can do things better. We continue to work with businesses in seeking to do that and we are seeking to address any issues raised as quickly as possible.

We are working well within capacity and have lots of spare capacity at the moment. We are ready to go whenever that increase in business happens. It is very difficult to say what the business will look like. We are in very new territory and it will take quite a significant period of time before we can assess the full impact of the UK now being outside the Single Market.