Northern Irish milk prices could collapse in the event of a hard Brexit, with millions of litres of milk unable to travel across the border for processing.

“In Northern Ireland, they do not have the processing capacity to handle all their milk,” Dairy Industry Ireland director Conor Mulvihill said.

“There’ll be no place to process a good bit of the 803m litres that travels south of the border for processing. There would be an immediate collapse in the NI milk price. There could also be an environmental issue in where would all that excess milk go?”

Milk from NI currently enjoys equal “product of origin” status to milk produced in the Republic of Ireland, but Tánaiste Simon Coveney has confirmed that standardised status for milk and animal products has not yet been agreed by the European Commission and the UK authorities.

If a hard Brexit occurs on 31 October, then the UK will be considered a third country and be subject to sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS).

“Almost 40% of milk produced on Northern Irish farms gets processed south of the border,” Coveney said.

“Unfortunately in a no-deal Brexit we don’t have those luxuries [regularity alignment].”