Mr. John McGrane:

The concerns currently are that, with the first phase of learnings on the Ireland side, there is a much higher level of alertness to the disruption that will be caused when Britain applies the full rigour of its obligations and intentions on the rest of the Brexit deal between October and January next year. The earliest manifestations of that are in cost, which is a competitiveness factor. They are also manifest in delays.

I noted earlier that the British consumer of Irish food and many other Irish products enjoys a wonderfully efficient complex of price competitiveness, product quality, delivery timeliness, and all the factors that make Irish produce an easy and a preferred purchase by the British consumer. We should not take that for granted. Any number of things could distort that competitive position in the months ahead, after years and years of building it up.

Companies do not win shelf space in a Marks & Spencer supermarket in Manchester overnight. It is done over years of working with Bord Bia and many other people. We virtually own those shelves today. We do not want to lose them because we are late arriving owing to a day being added to the supply chain, a form missing on a truck, a more cumbersome than necessary declaration system or the costs of administering these changes being done without State support, which would ultimately hit the consumer. In those circumstances, we would lose the precious ground that was made up over many years through the hard work of many people across these islands. British consumers have choice. They may ultimately decide this is not working for them and they may need to start thinking about alternatives. We cannot allow that to happen.