Ms Margaret Hearty:

I can kick things off. Regarding the Deputy's first comment, we are hearing more positive comments and positive noise from both the new Labour Government and the EU, as well as Ireland and the UK, obviously, regarding the reset. This goes back to the point that uncertainty is the worst thing for businesses to deal with. All through the Brexit negotiations, we talked about the noise out there and tried to dial it down into what a business needed to do to continue to trade, to grow and to export. We are linked into the various different committees in both jurisdictions. We are feeding the concerns we are hearing expressed by businesses through the trade hub into the respective committees and ensuring that business voices are heard. Our plans are to continue to expand our trade hub and we received additional funding in the budget last week, which was very welcome, to continue to do that.

Businesses are entrepreneurial and will continue to trade if they understand the rules of engagement. Our approach is to distil that into practical business information and keep the businesses well advised. We need to do more in a similar manner to what we were doing in the early Brexit days, which was going out and holding information sessions. It requires a back-to-basics approach on that as well.

On the veterinary agreement-----