Mr. Thomas Hunter McGowan:

We welcome the opportunity to address the committee on this issue. InterTradeIreland helps business explore new cross-Border markets, develop new products, processes and services and become investor-ready. We engage particularly with small and medium-sized enterprises and, to date, we have helped over 32,000 small businesses on the island of Ireland. We work on a 32-county basis and we have activities in every county on the island of Ireland. Most of our supports are in three main strands, namely, cross-Border business funding, business intelligence and providing meaningful contacts.

Trade between the South and North is quite extensive and there is much traffic, and that has come into sharp focus recently as a result of the UK's decision to leave the European Union. Every month, there are over 177,000 lorry journeys, 205,000 van journeys and 1.85 million people crossings of the Border. It is active traffic and the relationship will be changed as a result of these new negotiations. We have been active in trying to assist companies in navigating their way through the coming changes. It is a particularly big challenge and our business monitor indicates 98% of businesses do not have a plan in place to deal with Brexit. On top of that, 80% of businesses rely on the news as their main source of information about Brexit.

In order to address those challenges, we set about a number of practical measures that people can follow in order to prepare. In particular, we are talking about planning for Brexit and we have set out a roadmap for people and steps they should take, even with the uncertainty. I will leave it there and if the committee wishes to ask some questions, I can elaborate on issues.