Mr. Neil McDonnell:

It is very sector dependent. On the export side, it tends to be what we would call artisan food and drink such as cheese and small batch whiskey.

We are not speaking about the large multinational brands that are on both sides of the Border. There is a special EU category for less than 500 hectolitres. They are the people we do not want to see affected. It is unlikely that alcohol products would be affected.

With regard to food we heard the debate in Westminster about chlorinated chicken. There is goodwill on the UK side in that it does not want to get into this. There is a significant amount of pressure coming from those quarters where the UK is trying to do a deal with the US on food and the US sees an opportunity in asking the UK to diverge from EU standards. If Great Britain departs from EU food standards, particularly in areas such as GMO, hormones and antibiotics, we can see how it could affect the green lane proposals for transport between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We have not seen this yet. We also have not seen the proposals I mentioned earlier with regard to the UK starting to enforce its obligations at points of import. We take legal advice and customs advice on this and I am not the best person to speak about it. It is extremely technical. This is what got forgotten about in the emotion of the Brexit debate.

The establishment of the Single Market was substantially a British initiative driven by Margaret Thatcher. In trying to move away from it people do not realise how much friction was removed from trading relationships over the past 30 years. The highest degree of regulation is in food, agricultural products and phytosanitary standards. If we start to diverge, particularly on products that have a high degree of regulation, these issues become very dynamic very quickly. We have seen this with the empty shelves debate. I know it did not happen north of the Border and we do not want to see it happening.

Let us not forget that while certain politicians in the UK passed insensitive remarks about how the Irish would be forced to go a particular way because of food, Ireland is a very substantial net exporter of food to the UK. It tends to export unprocessed food to the UK and it tends to import from the UK processed foods. If we look at our breakfast tables, a large quantity of the cereals and certain packaged products are from Britain. This got forgotten about in the Brexit debate. I am not knocking that but the focus was on the concerns of the Irish agriculture industry. The exposure to Brexit for my members is on the import side. Our businesses import a large amount from Great Britain. Luckily, we seem to have managed this relatively seamlessly, with a few creases around rules of origin. As the UK begins to impose at ports its border controls on exports from the Republic of Ireland direct to Great Britain, we do not want to see material barriers going up. Nor do we want to see the green lane proposals between Great Britain and Northern Ireland presenting a difficulty.