Ms Deirdre Fay:

The phytosanitary controls on plant and plant products imported into Ireland are required under the EU official control regulation and the plant health regulation. Mr. Delany mentioned the Department's plant health and biosecurity strategy. These import controls are a crucial element of the strategy. In terms of the total number of consignments imported in 2023, there were almost 15,000, of which 847 were forestry consignments. For import controls, the central border control points, BCPs, are in Dublin Port, Dublin Airport and Rosslare. Of those consignments, more than 10,000 underwent physical inspection.

I return to Mr. Delany's point about the two-pronged approach. We are not only getting certification from the exporting country, but we are also doing significant checks here at the border control points. On the sampling, Mr. Delany mentioned that it is part of the International Standard for Phytosanitary Measures, ISPM, No. 31, which is the international standard that provides for a statistical basis. It is a statistical basis for sampling and inspection of regulated articles. In any inspection it is not really feasible to inspect the entire consignment, so the phytosanitary inspection is performed mainly on representative subsamples obtained from the consignment. The ISPM details approved approaches for doing that.