Dr. Mike Johnston:

To deal with Senator Gallagher's points, the Northern Ireland protocol has strong support within the agrifood sector in Northern Ireland, simply because we recognise that, without it, we would be in great trouble. Certainly, if we did not have the protocol, dairy farmers and their local communities throughout the island of Ireland would be a lot worse off than they are at the moment. We are therefore supportive of the protocol. It needs to be tweaked, but we certainly do not want to see an end to the protocol.

To deal with Senator Dooley’s points about what is not perfect from a northern perspective, by far the big issue for us is the island of Ireland issue we are discussing. To give some other insights into points we are trying to get resolved with the British Government, there are what are called support health attestations, SHAs. These relate to products that come from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Products of animal origin, for example, have to be accompanied by an export health certificate, EHC, which is signed by a vet in Great Britain. The UK Government, at the back end of last year, recognised there would be significant costs involved in that and so they put in place what is called a movement assistance scheme, MAS. Under that movement assistance scheme, the cost of those vets signing the export health certificates is covered by the UK Government. If, however, there is a Northern Ireland product in that, so let us say, for example, there is butter from Northern Ireland that is sold to a bakery in Great Britain and that bakery is selling that product back into Northern Ireland, before the vet can sign the export health certificate for that bakery product to come back to Northern Ireland, he has to have this support health attestation from a vet in Northern Ireland. Unlike the cost of the export health certificates signed in Great Britain, in Northern Ireland the cost of these SHAs for the vets is having to be dealt with by the companies.

We are trying to get the UK Government to include the cost of those SHAs under the movement assistance scheme. That is just one of the things on which we are trying to work because the fact that companies in Northern Ireland have to bear those costs is hitting their competitiveness, particularly in the context of trying to compete with other companies in Great Britain. That will give the committee a little bit of an insight on that issue. The costs that are now involved in operating the protocol are raising increasing concerns.