Mr. Aodhán Connolly:

I will try to respond quickly. The biggest thing that has taken up most of my time for these past few years has been shooting the unicorns of false narratives, as the Chairman has just said there, about shelves being completely empty. There were challenges but they were not just because of the protocol. In the same way people shouted about GATT 24, that we could go out with no deal and everything would be just fine, our main role in this, as a business community and as the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group, has been to explain to people what the challenges and opportunities are and what the reality is. That is the best thing we can do. It takes a lot of time, energy and talking to different people to understand the pressures on individual sectors.

There are still some challenges and people still need to adapt. On 22 February we saw export health certificates coming in for those things on the prohibited and restricted list. That continues to be a challenge, as do the customs inputs that have to be done for hundreds of thousands of products. They were always going to be a challenge. Are we better off than we were? Yes, people are adapting and we are seeing things like the groupage system, which has come online. There are still some teething problems because it took a few weeks to get that up and running. It was not ready on 1 January and we are getting there with it as well.

We have a limited period now to get to the new normal. We have until 1 October, and 1 November for parcels, to get a new system in place. What we need - it is very simple - is for the EU to work with us to allow the grace periods to happen, for the UK to work with us to look at those milestones and those technical solutions, and for both of them to talk to us and to continue to listen and work with us to deliver a system that removes friction and allows us to keep Northern Ireland business competitive, with choice and affordability for Northern Ireland households.