Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Gabh mo leithscéal. I welcome the witnesses to the committee. I thank them for their presentations. I will begin with Mr. Cody. We had a discussion last week with Mr. Liam Irwin about potential customs posts and I put a question to him. I am sure Mr. Cody has read the transcripts and followed the discussion and will be aware of some of the issues I raised. I put in a freedom of information request to the Revenue. It was an information request for records concerning the establishment of possible customs posts along the Border - not on the Border, but along the Border. I was told that Revenue had 31 such documents. Some of them were articles. For example, the Irish Examinerhad an article in which Ministers were quoted. There are other documents that talked about potential posts along the Border. The other documents are, for example, briefings on the matter to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Minister for Finance and the Department of the Taoiseach, PowerPoint presentations, briefing material, a note to the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, a presentation on customs and internal discussion documents. There are 31 documents in total, a handful of which are newspaper articles in the public domain. Is there any valid reason these documents, which, as I said, must have some reference to establishing customs posts along the Border, are not being provided to the Oireachtas finance committee that is discussing this matter?