Mr. Glenn Carr:

With the border inspection facility at Rosslare, we manage to have all agencies on the one site. Again, working back from a customers' perspective in designing these processes, it is really important. The person goes into one area in Rosslare and the agencies come to the person as against the person having to go to multiple sites as happens in Dublin, which the haulage industry tells us can give rise to possible consequences apart from the annoyance of moving from one location to another, such as issues emerging with tachographs or a point in time.

Our border inspection post is outside of the port but is under a derogation and it will come inside the port. We have provided for this in our master plan for a future design of the port. I understand that it is an EU requirement that the post would be inside a port security boundary for security reasons. The temporary post works very well and we believe the permanent post will work equally well, if not better, now that we have had a bit of time to address any issues that have been identified in the first design.

With regard to digitisation, I absolutely agree. The port is embarking on a digitisation programme with automation where possible. Equally, that needs to apply in the customs area. We are going from 1.6 million declarations to 20 million declarations a year and we must have the facilities and digital solutions for this to make life easier for everybody. There are a lot of players in this, from the driver in the cab to the central distribution depot or the manufacturer and others in the supply chain. It requires integration with all the elements of the supply chain to make sure the information is following in real live time to the end destination.

On the land bridge question, it is very difficult to know. I believe there will be a need to look at the land bridge and its true time and cost.

For example, if I am going to go through the UK, it is the amount of back-office time, the actual time it takes for checks, the time it take to conduct physical checks at the different ports, the permits that are required and integration with all of the different systems. One can easily search Google and be told it will take 14 hours but that is not the reality, which is what we need to recognise. It takes 18 hours to sail from Rosslare to Cherbourg, one will be in Dunkirk within 23.5 hours and now we are seeing greater activity benefits, particularly with hauliers going to Dunkirk because one is 16 km from the Belgium border and one's driver has a completely free tachograph. We are starting to also see that some of the Irish hauliers are forging links, relationships and partnerships in Europe. This is not uncommon with a lot of the traffic that went through originally, particularly unaccompanied traffic where a trailer is dropped to the port, we put it on the ship, the ship brings it to the corresponding port and a partner haulier company picks up the trailer at the other end to drive it to its final destination. We are seeing that a lot of the traffic at the moment is accompanied, which is a real indicator that a lot of it is the land bridge traffic. Some of that is already moving to unaccompanied. Again, it will be interesting over the next while to really look at the true land bridge time and costs versus direct sailings. There is a premium at the moment on direct services but I am not quite sure it is as much in Europe, so one must do the full analysis on that.

From conversations that I have had, it seems that some of the decisions now have been taken away from the hauliers and that is very important. Ireland's industry, at the coalface, has really got involved in the supply chain because it is their product being moved. I know, at first hand, of major organisations in Ireland that have now moved their supply chain directly into Europe. That means such traffic is going to be maintained and staying. A simple example that I have seen is Amazon traffic coming in. Very interestingly, we are now seeing more inbound traffic from Europe than outbound. Again, that would have been an issue previously for a lot of haulage companies because, typically, they would have to go through the land bridge to pick something up for their back-fill coming back. However, we now have more laden trucks coming in from Europe than leaving Ireland. That tells us that parts of the supply chain have obviously moved to directly dealing with Europe. There is a lot that will play out. There is always going to be the land bridge. The land bridge is probably going to be quicker but these checks were not in place before Christmas, and we all saw what happened at the ports of Dover, Calais and so forth. The more frequent the service and the more connectivity is offered directly into Europe, then the more companies will use it, and the more sustainable it will be.

Finally, in regards to stockpiling there has been a trend. Every time a Brexit issue has been approached there has been a bit of stockpiling. It is hard to say whether that will happen again in July. There is a possibility that it might happen if what the UK decides to implement is going to be more problematic than what is already there. Having said that, there are issues at the moment and we have seen a direct switch to Europe and Rosslare.