Dr. Mike Johnston:

I thank the committee for the invitation to meet with it this afternoon and for the interest that it shows in this very important issue. From our point of view, we are very supportive of the Northern Ireland protocol, but it is not perfect. There are elements of it that need to be fixed. However, please do not kill the Northern Ireland protocol because it has allowed us to continue with the trade flows, by and large uninterrupted. We are supportive of the Northern Ireland protocol and of the efforts of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Simon Coveney, and his colleagues in trying to keep this particular issue of the island of Ireland to the fore. The problem that we have had is that the Irish Sea dimension of the Northern Ireland protocol has dominated the thinking and negotiations. Despite the best efforts of Mr. Lavelle, Mr. Mulvihill, and myself, over the past 18 months at least, to say that there is another issue here to be addressed, so far here has not been the necessary political energy into dealing with this island of Ireland issue. From a dairy industry point of view, it is every bit as important as the Irish Sea dimension, and maybe even more important.

From a Northern Ireland dairy industry perspective, there are a number of additional points I would like to share with the committee. First, there is no segregation of milk. We do not have the facilities to segregate milk, either in Northern Ireland or in the Republic of Ireland. There is just no facility there. That would require quite a bit of time. It would require a lot of investment if we were forced into doing that. The other major issue is that, here in Northern Ireland, we do not have sufficient processing capacity to be able to manufacture all the milk that is produced in Northern Ireland. Approximately one third of the milk produced here is transported south from manufacturing into a range of products, many of which are then sold on into third country export markets.

It is interesting to reflect on why that has happened. It is not just something that has come out of the ether over recent years. This has been going on for 20-plus years. It has been facilitated by the Good Friday Agreement. The drivers of this have been the need to improve efficiency in manufacturing and to add value for the benefit of dairy farmers throughout Ireland. We have been able to do this because we have been operating to the common EU sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, standards, we continue, under the Northern Ireland protocol, to have free movement of milk and dairy products on the island of Ireland, and we have a good working relationship between the departments of agriculture North and South in terms of the documentation that is required and the audits that are done. That is all done with the agreement of and acknowledgement by the European Commission.

Therefore, we have unique circumstances here in the North where we have a lack of processing capacity in particular. As Mr. Mulvihill said, we need the political will and political decision to say that mixed-origin product that is manufactured in the Republic is designated as an EU product. If we can do that and get to that stage with that political decision having been taken, it then becomes a case for civil servants within the Commission, it is hoped, to work with the industry throughout Ireland to determine which free trade agreements, FTAs, we need to tackle first and see if we can get a plan together. We are very supportive of the points that both Mr. Lavelle and Mr. Mulvihill have made.