Mr. Brian McGrath:

On the protocol, we put in an awful lot of effort and energy from 2016 right through, promoting our case. If there had been a no-deal Brexit, Foyle Port would have potentially lost 40% of its trade overnight. That is why we are so pleased to see how the protocol was drafted and how it was written. Had we written it ourselves we could not have done a much better job. The reason for that is the majority of trade we bring in comes either from Europe or the rest of the world. Only about 20% of what we bring in comes from the UK. It is in that area that we have the bureaucracy and friction. Given the scale of it, and compared with the rest of our imports, it is not too big a problem for us. That is not to say that we underestimate the challenges for people involved in industry with east-west transactions. The North-South transactions we experience are seamless at the minute so we are delighted about that.

On council involvement, three councillors from Derry City and Strabane District Council are board members of ours. The councils we look to engage with are Donegal County Council, Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council and then Derry City and Strabane District Council, which is the one we have most engagement with. We recognise that the port cannot just look at Derry the way it might traditionally have done. We are a regional player and we need to make sure we fully engage with the other stakeholders. We have a good relationship with Donegal County Council and with the people working as executive officers there. As we prepare to come out of the lockdown arrangements next year, we need to rekindle some of those contacts. It would definitely help if we had political buy-in regarding some of the ideas we have that would give a steer to officials and encourage them to engage as fully as possible. I cannot complain about any of the contacts we have; we have a good network and we are as outward looking as we can possibly be.