Dr. Martina Lawless:

I thank the Senator for those questions. Regarding import substitution, flour is a great example of where the agreement was less comprehensive than people had hoped. Even though the UK and EU have almost identical trade arrangements with Canada, Canadian wheat is not being counted as part of the UK's contribution to flour production. Therefore, it is hit by tariffs when it enters Ireland. The trade agreement contains strict rules on which products qualify for free trade access and which do not. Some of these anomalies have emerged. Since Canadian wheat is imported to Ireland on exactly the same terms as it is imported by the UK, it would seem like an obvious place where domestic production capacity could be built up. My understanding is that there is almost no domestic flour production left in Ireland. There are some mills in Northern Ireland. There would seem to be some potential in respect of products that are largely sourced in the UK but are currently being hit because either their inputs are coming from a third country or they are subject to significant regulatory standards checks. The latter applies to quite a few food products. There would be some opportunities for Ireland, and not just domestically. We have used the term "import substitution", but this would also be an area where Ireland could export more into the EU market and replace goods that the UK had been a supplier of to the EU. It is an export opportunity as well an import substitution one.

Regarding infrastructural investment, I am not an expert on infrastructure, but the increase in direct linkages to the EU is important. We have still not seen the UK putting in place full customs checks on its imports, so the many concerns that people had about significant delays at Dover have not emerged yet. However, they remain a substantial risk. Building up direct access to the EU market as much as possible would be useful.

Regarding the UK as an export destination, there is a considerable role for the various enterprise agencies, in particular Enterprise Ireland, to try to support firms in moving towards broader European markets as their first export destinations. What has tended to happen is that companies export to the UK first, build up some expertise and then begin to export more widely. They have tended to enter one market at a time and not become global exporters overnight. The UK has been an easy market for firms to enter, with our common language being a sizable factor. We have a common understanding, many media outlets in common and so on. It has been a low-cost export market for many Irish firms. Without tariffs, it is still a reasonably accessible market, but that will depend on the extent to which the UK continues to have similar regulations and the extent of the checks it installs. Support in thinking about broader European markets would be useful. Putting supports in place would be important, particularly in terms of language, for example, language exchanges and links.

On data, I understand that there is fairly promising news on data equivalence recognition coming from Europe. I do not think an official declaration has been made yet but there were announcements last week that it is being looked into and it is likely that, for the moment at least, the UK would be recognised as having equivalent data protection standards to the EU. This will facilitate data movement between the two. If the UK was not given that sort of equivalence recognition, it would raise quite considerable problems for many services firms in particular to move data out of the EU into another country which does not have data equivalence recognition is quite complicated and quite costly. It is not an area in which I am particularly expert. Dr. Barrett may wish to come in on the broader EU issues.