Mr. Eamonn O'Reilly:

I will work through the questions in reverse order. On the issue of the land bridge, we are starting to see signs of hauliers again promoting usage of the land bridge for reasons of cost, speed and shortness of transit time. If the land bridge re-establishes itself, it will again become the preferred means for hauliers to move between Ireland and continental Europe. That is down to cost, time and the frequency of sailings out of Ireland. There are signs that it might be starting to re-establish itself but, as with so many issues relating to Brexit, we just do not know whether it is going to prove reliable. It will take several months for that to prove itself.

On the issue of the introduction of border checks in Britain in July and the effect they will have, I do not anticipate that the checks will have any impact on the operations of Dublin Port. That is not to say that they will not be very significant checks for exporters. Dublin Port and Rosslare Europort are going to be able to handle all of the exports that are coming out of Ireland but, unfortunately, from the point of view of Ireland Inc., those lines of trades are going to flow and that is entirely outside of our control. It is down to the British authorities and the nature and extent of the checks they choose to introduce. Britain is in a unique position having left the EU. It is entirely autonomous. It can make its mind up in whatever way it wishes in terms of what border controls it decides to put in place for exports from Ireland or elsewhere in the EU into Britain.

We simply do not know today what those checks are going to be.

I absolutely agree with the hauliers' comments at the committee's earlier session about the checks happening at different locations around Dublin Port. It is completely suboptimal to have all of these different types of checks in different locations but, unfortunately, any is all that was possible given how tight the land area is in Dublin Port.

The direct question was asked on whether there was anything the committee could do to help. The Dublin Port Company would aspire to opening a dialogue about entirely moving, within the next five to ten years, all of the boarding and reception facilities out of Dublin Port to a remote location at the other end of the Dublin Port Tunnel. This would be in a similar fashion to what has happened in Rosslare where a haulier leaves the port and goes 1 km out. Mr. Carr referred to those facilities as temporary facilities. If that could be achieved, it would free up about 14 ha in Dublin Port. This 14 ha would be about one third the size of Rosslare Port and may give the committee a sense of the scale of land lost due to Brexit.

On the digitisation and physical paperwork, there absolutely is a need for the introduction of overarching systems architecture, which embraces everything that the shipping lines, the hauliers and customs are doing. One would see this in the major ports in Europe, and especially the big container ports with enormous ships coming from the Far East where many people have an interest in the cargo on board. This includes the cargo handlers, the hauliers, the revenue agencies, and others. There is a need now, following the British departure from the European Union, for those sorts of systems to start to be developed. We are starting work on that ourselves. This will take a number of years. It is not a quick solution. It might be that customs will be in a position to provide significant digital functionality, which I believe may be there already, which hauliers and cargo companies can access. On top of that there is a need for very sophisticated systems to be in place to help manage efficiently the flow of goods and information through the ports.

I believe I have picked up on all of the Chairman's questions.