Mr. John Nolan:

On meetings with Revenue and the HSE, most of the last meeting we had with Revenue was consumed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine making its points as to why the checks and processes are needed. It goes back to the old customs code as it relates to sanitary and phytosanitary checks on goods. The rules are the rules and it does not seem that they will be changed or made more flexible. We have asked if they could be made easier for what we call regular goods. We were told this would be looked at but I am not sure if anything will come out of it. A regular load of a given product will have to go through the process each time because the rules are the rules, so it is going to be difficult. With regard to any goods requiring sanitary or phytosanitary checks, there will be a minimum delay of four hours.

Mr. McArdle made the point earlier that one has to give 24 hours' notice. The problem with this is that within 15 hours, the load is physically in Rosslare or Dublin because of the distance between the UK and Ireland. We will engage to try to get flexibility on that point, but the officials seem to be sticking to the requirement for 24 hours' notice. If they could work with less than 24 hours' notice, it would be easier for us in some respects because of the original veterinary certificates which have to travel with the load. It is a small thing but it is important for us.

Revenue has rules. We are asking that they be modified for the benefit of everyone else. The rules have not changed yet, if the Senator understands me. That is all I can say. The weekly failures of the automated import system, AIS, since Brexit have not helped. There are always outages during the week with the effect that declarations cannot be completed, which means that imports and exports cannot happen. The system is failing us from an Ireland Inc. perspective. The system has been modified. There was a big modification yesterday. We will wait and see how that works out this week.