Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In view of the failure that has happened with customs, the rigmarole at the ports, food being dumped, drivers being incarcerated and held up, and hauliers being destroyed, will the Minister appoint an outside facilitator with experience in trading, IT and business to bring this together and to knock heads together? The Government was warned by Deputy Verona Murphy and many more of us that this confusion and disarray would happen, and that is what we have. It is too serious, and our industry is too important, to allow that to happen. We do not have enough trained agents and not enough training has been given to hauliers. Above all, there are two or three different systems but they are not connecting and there are systems failures and everything else. Will the Minister please bring in an external facilitator before it is too late, to try to save businesses, hauliers, and good food and other products that are being damaged?

My second question relates to Algerian students coming to the University of Limerick, UL. We are told we cannot travel more than 5 km and people are being prosecuted for doing so, but this flies in the face of all that. My daughter is a student in Limerick, as are many others. They are all at home, having been told they cannot drive beyond 5 km. This pilot of an Erasmus+ scheme should not be happening in the middle of a pandemic.

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