Mr. Niall Cody:

I think there is a great deal of work going on in the various sectors. Our colleagues in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are engaged very much in discussions with the different sectors. There has been significant involvement across the board.

The challenge is that we are discussing a lot of items on which we do not know the final result. Going back to the grouping example, if one will be collecting from Kilkenny, Dublin and Dundalk to bring goods via the land bridge to France and one will not be letting anything out in the UK, one will be travelling under the transit arrangement and it will be the exact same as if one is supplying under the Single Market. The complicating factor is that right now one would do that and one would not have to consider transit because one would be merely driving across, via ferry, across the land bridge and out the other side. That is why the transit arrangements are important. A matter we are discussing with our colleagues in the other member states is to be clear that Irish goods that go over the land bridge are EU goods and are in free circulation. It is important when they end up in the French, Belgian or Dutch ports that they are received as Irish goods and there is no customs procedure. That is one of the big challenges.