Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Securing an effective UK land bridge is a priority for us and has been throughout these negotiations, given our current position and our geographical position. As the Deputy mentioned, the UK's accession to the Convention on common transit is welcome. That will allow EU goods and Irish goods to transit through the UK without undergoing many of the customs import and export formalities on entry to and exit from the UK. This issue is discussed regularly. We have presented a paper to our colleagues in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark to try to ensure that we have a functioning mechanism in place when the goods land on mainland Europe, such that they can pass through as quickly as possible. We cannot predict what will happen between Dover and Calais or at the Eurotunnel, but we will engage with our UK colleagues to try to ensure that there is as effective a route as possible.

With regard to the overall progress and work being done to try to secure other access routes, I mentioned theMV W.B Yeats, but we also have two Brexit-buster ships, which were launched last year between Dublin and Rotterdam, and Dublin and Zeebrugge. These ships were added as well as the MV W.B. Yeats. We will continue to engage with the shipping companies, industry stakeholders and hauliers to make sure that there is additional capacity where they need it. One has to take into account that some of these ships operate for 20 hours, 40 hours or 60 hours, and if there are perishable goods, whether food, flowers and so on, the longer trip will not work, so that is where the land bridge is most important. We continuously engage with EU colleagues and we will work with the UK to try to ensure that we have as quick a route as possible and that the land bridge works as effectively as possible.

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