Mr. Barry Delany:

I thank the Deputy. We were discussing the issues earlier. We do have concerns and we are engaging very closely with our Scottish colleagues, as well with colleagues in Northern Ireland. We have tried to engage with the European Commission on this and we also have our own legal advice on it with regard to our international trade obligations. Where an exporting authority believes they are in a position to certify freedom then we cannot unilaterally impose even a temporary cessation on that until we can show that the risk is there. As part of their surveillance currently they have no findings of these pests. While they are found in other parts of the UK, they are not certifying that that area is free of them. This puts us in a difficult position. Obviously we trade with the UK as well, so we have to be very conscious of that in terms of our WTO sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, rules, and the UK Brexit trade and co-operation agreement. There are concerns around reciprocity that might occur as a result of this. Some 80% of what we fell here is traded to the UK. We must bear this in mind as well. From that point of view this is why we have been pushing very hard to have a negotiated settlement with the Scottish authorities, on which we hope to come back to update the committee very shortly.