Mr. Glenn Carr:

I can sympathise with the hauliers because one of my businesses is a company called Navigator. We bring in car parts from the UK and it is very challenging for us at the moment. What Mr. O'Reilly said is correct. There was a complete lack of preparation by household names in the UK for the reality of what the new post-Brexit world would look like. However, this is it now.

One of the benefits Rosslare has seen is the shift in the supply chain going directly to Europe. I believe much of that will remain and be maintained but we should not underestimate the amount of trade we had, and I have no doubt will get back, with the UK. It is going to take time for companies to adjust. There are no quick technical solutions to this. In implementing this, we are using the sophistication level of nearly 30 years ago in trying to clear declarations.

In terms of what can be done now, we said we have worked well with State agencies around design and how traffic can flow through the port. I do not think that is an issue at the moment because stuff is moving through the ports quickly, but volume is right down. If something is not ready then it is not leaving the UK port. If it arrives in Ireland it goes through the current process and often one small error in the whole declaration can hold it up. Before Christmas, everyone was talking about the congestion at ports. We have not seen that, particularly with UK traffic. We have had a bit of congestion ourselves but that involved direct services going out and the unprecedented demand for those services. I think some of the supply chains will shift completely out of the UK. Ireland has always been associated with central distribution out of the UK. We have almost been part of the UK in that regard but now we are part of Europe. That is where the difficulties are because we are trading so much with a third country which is badly prepared for what is involved.

We should not underestimate what will come in July because we will go through all of this again on the UK side. This is provided it does not seek an extension to that. It is going to be difficult and it will take a while to train people in customs clearance. We did not have many people ready to step into that industry. There is a skill there that needs to be built up. An invoice I received a few weeks ago had 1,800 different commodity codes for one trailer. It took nearly ten hours to clear and that involved using people who were experienced in that area. This was a world that used to have a just-in-time system, where someone in a garage in Dublin could wait until 3 o'clock to order a piece of equipment and it would be delivered from the UK before 10 o'clock the next morning.

It is not physically possible to do any of that at the moment. Therefore, there are elements of the supply chain, of that next day just-in-time, that will be altered so it may become a 24 or 48 hour service or stock may need to be held in Ireland. The good new is that from the European side, the issue has always been frequency and availability of services. As I said, we now have 32 services going to Europe every week and we hope that will grow. I know Mr. O'Reilly has seen increases in Dublin's services as well. Over the next few months a balance will need to be achieved and I have no doubt that it will be. We work with the hauliers as best we can but there are some fundamental things that are part of the new world, which people will have to get used to and work through. Hopefully, in time, technology will lend a hand as we understand the full requirements before we install systems that may not meet the requirements and, therefore, cause more difficulty at some point in the future.