One year ago, Arthur O’Neill told the Irish Farmers Journal of his “shock” upon waking up to the UK Brexit referendum result. His machinery dealership in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, is located on a Northern stretch of road sandwiched between two border crossings with the Republic.
With the recent discourse in London and Brussels pointing towards a hard Brexit and the end of free trade between the UK and the EU, Arthur is now preparing for tough decisions. “If there’s a border post and my customers can’t drive freely, I’m thinking of moving the business to southern Ireland,” he says.
Our business is 90% southern Ireland and 10% Northern Ireland
It’s a fine day out and farmers and contractors flat out making silage are constantly ringing him for parts and advice with their machines. On the phone, Arthur asks for directions to one customer’s farm in Co Cavan. “We’re geographically north of the border, but our business is 90% southern Ireland and 10% Northern Ireland,” he says.
Arthur has many years of shipping tractors and other equipment across the border, and he is not prepared to go back to the bureaucracy of the past. “We had to load everything up, go to Newry, spend half an hour filling our forms, then do the same at the border post south of the border and finally arrive in Dundalk,” he remembers.
In the dark
Whether this will happen again or not, he doesn’t know. Like many farmers and agri-business owners along the border, he is in the dark when it comes to the shape Brexit will take. “Everybody has an opinion, but nobody has a solution,” he says.
David Murphy, a beef farmer and contractor in Killeavy, Co Armagh, worries about border posts, too, as well as other aspects of everyday bureaucracy. “I’ll be charged a different tariff for using red diesel in the North and green diesel in the South,” he said.
With a quarter of his contracting jobs in the Republic, he also asks: “Are we going to be able to claim back VAT the way we can at the minute?” This question applies to all businesses with cross-border trade, as the EU currently operates as a single VAT area.
Across the border in Ardee, Co Louth, John Callan heads the PJ Callan dealership. Part of his business is to distribute a range of grass sowers, sprayers and fertiliser spreaders to other dealers in Northern Ireland. John says Brexit has not yet affected this trade, despite currency fluctuations: “We’ve lived through that before.”
’A lot of uncertainty’
What has emerged, though, is “a lot of uncertainty – and businesses don’t like that”, he says. “We’d like to see strong leadership from the Irish government. We’re small, we’re going to be most affected,” he adds.
Talking to people across the UK and Ireland, he has noticed that Brexit is a bigger discussion topic here. And he is worried that “the EU working to make it hard for the UK”.
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