Mr. Gerry Harrahill:

I will try to pick up on Senator O'Reilly and Senator Gallagher's comments. As Senator O'Reilly rightly said, we have taken on, in total, over 900 additional staff in the context of Brexit. There were two particular elements of focus to that decision, one of which was to ensure that we would be in a position to operate on a 24-7 basis at all our major points of import and export, which we are. I am very much focused on trade facilitation and that has certainly been a very strong focus for Revenue and customs from the start. The second element was about having sufficient and adequate enforcement capability in order to ensure that the level playing field is maintained for legitimate businesses and that they are not being undermined by illegitimate business. We were very fortunate in that we got approval from the Minister for Finance to take on those additional 900 people and they are in place and fully operational now. Overall, I am satisfied that we have that manpower capability in place. Of course, there was a huge additional investment by the State in the infrastructure at the ports and, to a lesser extent, at the airports.

The issue of familiarity was touched on by both Senators. We are satisfied that very good progress has been made. In the lead-up to 1 January a lot of businesses embraced the reality of Brexit. However, I had a meeting with my EU counterparts last week and a common theme was the extent to which, notwithstanding the fact that we had all made very clear that Brexit was happening on 1 January and that it would mean a sea change for processes and procedures, as negotiations were going on right up until Christmas, many businesses falsely or mistakenly put some trust in the idea that they could do away with the need to comply with customs formalities. That is a significant issue, not just for Irish trade and businesses but also for trade and businesses right across Europe. The other thing that was very significant was that a lot of businesses had a very understandable and strong focus on dealing with the immediate impact of Covid-19. Rather than planning for something that might happen in a week's time or a month's time, many businesses were struggling to deal with the reality of what they were facing on the day.

As regards what needs to be done, it is interesting that more businesses have applied for customs registration in the first four months of this year than in all of 2020.

That gives an indication of the pent up lack of preparation there is in various sectors. Some of that is down to people having stockpiled and having had a bit of fat in the system. That meant they were able to absorb the initial impacts of Brexit but there is no doubt that many businesses were late coming out of the traps. We are there to try to help and assist those businesses.

I mentioned this in my opening statement but it is also important to recognise that there are many businesses, starting today, next week and the following week, that are reopening after Covid and that have not been open in a post Brexit environment at all. Some of those businesses will probably be facing the challenge of dealing with the realities of Brexit and how they will cope with it in the coming weeks and months. We are anticipating that will arise as a level of demand and I know some of the trade representative bodies are in that space as well. As I mentioned at the outset, we are happy to work with the trade and representative bodies in that regard. We have participated in 27 events since the start of this year with almost 6,000 participants in those events. There is still a great opportunity and I have said on many occasions that it is never too late to get ready for the impact of Brexit. Even if it is later it is better than not getting prepared at all. We have to work collectively across the agencies and work with the trade and representative to try to make sure that businesses understand the impact of Brexit.

As has been mentioned by colleagues, on the agriculture side there are newer requirements kicking in on the UK side in October and next January. We need to make sure businesses are ready for those new requirements as well because that will hit them on the export side. We will hopefully have resolved most of the issues on the import side so we do not want a new problem to emerge.

I will ask Ms O'Neill to talk about the particulars of the VAT issue that Senator Gallagher asked about.