Ms Anne Coleman-Dunne:

I will do my best to cover the aspects the Deputy mentioned. InterTradeIreland may also have an input on this. In regard to the question on what the most effective tools are, it is horses for courses when looking at the small enterprises that are well serviced by LEOs. There was quite a way to go in building awareness and education. We found that one of the most effective tools was probably the customs upskilling because for 30 years, unless they were trading with other third countries, it has not been a big aspect of the way in which businesses do business. We found that was one of the keener and most-needed interventions. Ms Kilcullen might want to say something about the loan schemes that were brought in to assist with liquidity. On the Brexit journey we were lucky. We had a couple of years and, therefore, we started building the awareness, the education and the softer skills and working with businesses.

The harder interventions would have been in terms of the customs intervention. Enterprise Ireland, EI, operates the lean initiative, which aims to get companies to diversify away from the UK. We can take it back to the enterprise side of the Department to see if it learned or looked at the lessons. I am not sure it has had an opportunity to do so because we moved directly from Brexit into Covid. However, I certainly agree it would be a good look-back to do.

We were informed by the needs of businesses through the Enterprise Forum, which was initially chaired by the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and subsequently chaired by the Tánaiste. That was a great focus for us to hear at first-hand the immediate needs of businesses and how we could best address those. The retail forum chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy English, was a great sponsor of online vouchers to get businesses online. In the Covid situation, that has really helped businesses to manage, survive and, more than that, to do well.

I will have to go back to the Department on lean energy. In our Department, the climate action plan has been recently launched and I know that different sectors have different targets to meet, no more than I suppose in the food sector. I will need to come back to the Deputy on that issue, if that is okay.

As regards the messages and experiences from the negotiating period for the protocol, again, we are on the sideline. Obviously, the negotiation is between the EU and UK. Every member state is informed by the Commission as to what is going on. It is fair to say that the Commission has given a great ear to the interests of Ireland and the particular persuasions and influences as to what would work. For example, if one looks at the Commission paper from October last, when it came forward with four papers in different areas, it had very good input from all member states but particularly Ireland. This was shown in the case of medicines. A real issue for citizens in Northern Ireland was accessing medicines they would be able to get if they were on mainland UK. We have had fantastic support over the years from all of the EU members and we still have a very good listening ear in the Commission. However, at the end of the day, it is the EU, specifically the Commission and the UK service, which now forms part of the Commission, and the UK that are actually doing the negotiation. We will influence where we can.

Perhaps InterTradeIreland will add to that. Ms Kilcullen from the Department may also wish to speak about the loan schemes and how they have assisted.