Ms Carol Lynch:

One of the issues I want to raise is the postponement of the TB checks and what has come in over this year and continues to come in. One of the issues companies exporting to Great Britain face, in particular in the agrifood area, is that a lot of the sales take place on what is called a deliver-to-UK basis. What that means is they deliver their goods to their customer, warehouse, or the large multiples in such a way that it is as if they were sourced in Great Britain. The Irish company takes care of all the associated costs involved in the export from Ireland and the import into Great Britain and the goods land with no requirement on the importer. That is a huge issue for Irish companies selling food products into the large multiples and warehouses in the UK. The difficulties that have come up in recent months as BTOM comes into effect is that in order to import into Great Britain, you need to be established, in effect, you need to have a company. If you cannot, you can get an indirect agent to act on your behalf, but it must take full liability for any costs, duties and impact and you will not get an agent to act in that way for obvious reasons. The only other option is to set up a company in Great Britain to act as the importer, and that is a huge cost to companies given what is involved in setting up a company from an establishment perspective - the staff, premises, and having all the documentation in place. There is an ancillary cost, which is not only the cost of the import, VAT, health certificates and SPS checks, but now we are looking at having another company operating in Great Britain. That is something that kind of fell out of the changes this year. Prior to this year, Irish companies had an exception whereby they could import into Great Britain much more freely.

Just as there is a common travel area for people, if a common travel area for business could be addressed, that would be very beneficial, particularly for smaller food exporters who rely on the Great Britain market for sales. I do not know how Mr. Donohoe feels about that.