Mr. Niall Cody:

No. Ms Lynch set out very well what companies should do. They should be looking at what features will be impacted by customs if they are trading with the UK and conducting an analysis of that. By their very nature, small companies will have limited engagement with customs but they will probably have one or two customers in Northern Ireland and Great Britain and it is about an analysis of what to do there. In the overall context of supporting business, we have a very strong record of providing as much information and simplification for businesses as possible. We are engaged with the customs consultative committee which has representatives of various trade groups involved in export-import-export. We have now broadened the membership because there will be people who will be engaged in import-export but would not have seen that. We attend seminars also. Our challenge in attending seminars right now is that everyone wants to know what will happen when that is, ultimately, a political negotiation. There is certain work that people can do, however.

Broadband is an absolute challenge for parts of rural Ireland and we are already engaged in a whole lot of online work. Our system is online as much as possible and we are very hopeful that various developments in the broadband strategy will keep helping to get there.

There are opportunities. The way customs works is that it is primarily carried out by agents at the lower level while the bigger companies have in-house staff. That model is likely to continue and there are probably opportunities for various people in that area. There are opportunities for the simplification process and that agents will step up to the mark on some of that where they are dealing with smaller traders. We will see different pricing models because what will be required of agents will be different when we fully exploit the UCC.