Mr. Niall Cody:

Last year was an exceptional year. The headline was probably cocaine.

The high-profile situation with the MV Matthewin November 2023 will be fairly familiar to everybody. It was a record seizure and a really good example of inter-agency co-operational work involving the Army ranger wing, which boarded the ship based on co-operation with MAOC N, which is based in Lisbon, and where we have staff member. It was also involved in this. The level of cocaine seizures was probably the highlight, and it was the lowlight in some ways. It has been really significant and it has been followed up by a big seizure a couple of days before Christmas in Foynes. There has been a very significant level of seizures in Rosslare.

Rosslare used to have six ferries during the week in winter and ten during the week in summer. Now, there are 36 ferries weekly, so that opens up whole new operations. On one level, our customs work has exploded. The last time I was here I was talking about 44 million import entries, compared to 1 million before Brexit. Yesterday, I was reading the up-to-date figure. Last year, we had 79 million import entries. They are all the legitimate returns to us, yet in those legitimate entries, there is hidden contraband, counterfeit, drugs, cigarettes-----