Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am concerned about where we were at. The imposition of Brexit has been on, for want of a better expression, the Twenty-six Counties, because the protocol has yet to be invoked. Therefore, there is a little bit of a competition issue there. All of what Brexit entailed is being enforced in our ports, especially Dublin and Rosslare. The issue is there is no comparison between what goes on in Dublin and what goes on in Rosslare, yet we have the same set of agencies and stakeholders from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and customs. The bigger issue with that is where delays ensue, that delay is on a business. It is on the product on the back of the lorry but ultimately it is the haulier who suffers the biggest delay.

There are associated issues. We have talked about drivers and how they are paid. They very quickly clock up huge expense if there are delays. It might only be an hour but that hour has such an impact between tachograph regulations and all sorts of different things. Rather than that delay being passed to the consumer at the height of a cost-of-living crisis - because that is ultimately where it ends up - we need to work better and smarter as agencies with the haulage operators, business operators, importers and exporters. How can that be done? There was a customs consultative meeting recently but it was the first one since May. From what I see of the disparity between Rosslare and Dublin, the issue is that Dublin is catering for probably 80% of customs traffic relating to UK imports whereas Rosslare is only catering for approximately 20%. The traffic is predominantly direct ferry and it is customs-alleviated.

There is no involvement with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine or the agencies. In Dublin Port, there is no interaction from the customs sector with the business entities outside of the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday. These operations work 24-7. There are issues with the opening hours of the port, but there has to be a dedicated phone line and people in place to operate it. This involves the spending of public money, and we must take account the stage we are at in Ireland between inflation and the cost of living. Brexit has brought a lot of that to the consumer and we have to deal with it in a fashion that makes sense to ensure these delays are minimised. I have seen a lot of the interactions over the months whereby the same answer keeps coming back from Revenue that it is dealing with the issue. Again, it is only dealing with the issue on a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. basis, five days a week. The cost is arising in the rest of that time. We need to put a dedicated phone line in place. As a committee, we should recommend that there are bimonthly meetings at the customs consultative committee, CCC, until such time as the Northern Ireland Assembly is up and running and the protocol is put in place. There is anti-competitive practice at the moment, given that we do not have the same level of stakeholders, agencies and customs staff in Northern Ireland that we do in our southern ports. The imposition and the cost is being borne by us and we had no part in Brexit. It has to be recognised. I am a politician now, but I was previously an advocate. My opinion has not changed much, and not to be disrespectful to anyone, but as revenue and customs we enforce to the nth degree without understanding the consequences for the business owners, the economy and even our workers and consumers. We cannot have it all being imposed down here and nothing happening in the North. That is the situation we find ourselves in. It is not our fault or the fault of the organisation represented here today, but we need to work to minimise the damage and the competition element of that. Would Mr. Cody agree with that?