Mr. John McGrane:

I will bring in Mr. Lynam on the detail but I will take a couple of macro points. We also hope the veterinary agreement can be achieved. This is by no means certain and this is the difficulty at present. As I said, the enemy of investment, job sustainability and further job growth is uncertainty. The sooner we know this, the better and it is becoming urgent for major - and less major - Irish food-related businesses. I would caution against false comfort. The UK consumers love the product we send them today. They love its quality, prompt delivery, price competitiveness and the service bundle wrapped around it in terms of delivery.

That should not be taken for granted by any of us. If we become uncompetitive on any of those matters, such as quality, delivery and readily available stuff like price points and content, the consumer may have no choice but to be shown other competing alternatives. We cannot hold our wonderfully achieved competitive position over 40 years in any kind of assumed continuity. It is at risk until we take the risk out of it. That is the position.

I will let Mr. Lynam talk a little bit more about the process towards an agreement. He will also elaborate on green energy. It is a little observed point and it may be uncomfortable for some, but Britain has moved from being somewhat in the laggard position nearly a decade ago in the energy space to being a world leader in technologies like offshore wind and in embracing the net-zero aim that we also share. We should not underestimate our British colleagues. What that means is opportunities to create business and jobs for Irish firms to work with British firms who really admire the skills in engineering and infrastructure development of Irish firms to partner up as these projects require because they are huge, to build offshore wind farms and connectors. We might have mentioned in passing that we work very closely with the people who favour the development of a further connector between Ireland and Britain in a shared energy space. It would all be built with private money and would require no recourse to the Exchequer at all, whereas a comparable connector to Europe, which we also favour, would require a lot of public sector money. There is room for everybody in this space. There is a very strong green partnering that is obvious here to people on these islands. The birds, bees, fish and most of all the wind do not know where the Border is, so it is natural to work across the Border.

In the context of the young English-speaking workforce in the services sector, the Chairman is right. The reality is that British firms are coming to Ireland as we speak. They are hiring in Ireland and they are identifying those issues because they have been well promoted by IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland and by people like us and others to say there is a market on the doorstep in England today that it highly compatible with its interests and where there are very talented people in a position to service it. We say that they should not close anything but they should open up additional operations on the island next door.

I will let Mr. Lynam speak more on the protocol, but our insight is that business tends to be quiet. It does not need to make a big fuss about things. Perhaps it should make a bigger fuss. Businesses in Northern Ireland are adapting to the necessities of the protocol, with some adaptation, and some more to come, which, when done, they can see gives them a wonderful opportunity to have faith in their own business franchises to invest further in them, to encourage investment from outside Britain and Ireland and to live up to the opportunity that is being given to them now, which is something in respect of which they advocated for many years. I will ask Mr. Lynam to respond to the Senator's remarks on the winning of a veterinary agreement and some of the other observations.