Mr. Niall Cody:

There is a freedom of information process by which documents that are part of the deliberative process and part of the analysis of Government services are excluded from release. We are engaged in a process of studying what are the options and possibilities. We started this back before the referendum vote. If we went back nine months and the Deputy asked me what is going to happen, we would have looked at what the situation was pre-1992. We would have said that the likelihood is that there would have to be customs posts, because it was at that point a very early stage of the deliberation. The EU customs code was legally adopted last July. There is to be four-year and five-year IT development across Europe. There are simplifications contained in the EU customs code that allows us to do things radically differently. However, if the Deputy asked us back then, we would not have had our preparatory work done. The papers and the deliberation are not a final conclusion. The Deputy is very aware that the problem with releasing a document that Revenue has looked at is that it can then turn into a headline stating that Revenue is planning for and opening customs posts. Under FOI legislation, there is a reason documents are not produced and there is a reason there are exemptions.