Getting the goods part 2: Rosslare feels the effect of Brexit bounce
Port On Every Neil Gardaí Picture: A Michael Routine Vehicle Of At Rosslare Check Euro
Staring straight at you as you get ready to drive off any one of a number of ferries entering Rosslare are two people who stand at each side of the vast gangway.
You’d hardly notice them, however, because they are quite far away.
And with so many people moving around them in hi-vis jackets, everyone appears to be an official of some description, so it would be easy to ignore them even if you did see them.
But it’s when you stand and watch them, it’s hard not to wonder — even marvel — at the way they will suddenly and subtly select a car or lorry for a spot check, carefully noting down the registration and make after it has passed.
Is it intelligence, you ask yourself, as they tuck their notebook back under their arm.
Maybe it was the broken rear light?
Or are they using “routine profiling”, as they call it these days?
Maybe it's a faulty number plate or a broken indicator light that draws their attention?
Maybe it is just nothing more than a hunch.
Whatever it is, nobody gets through Rosslare without their scrutiny.
The same applies to anybody who passes through Dublin Port, where — as in Rosslare — Customs officials don’t tend to smile much.
And while Inspector Larry Brady and his colleagues guard the checkpoints and keep a wary eye over proceedings as each ship arrives and leaves Dublin Port, their colleagues in Rosslare are practically breathless for all the work they do.
Dozens of them, under the direction of Sergeant Mick Morrissey, are at work checking every lorry that crosses into the confines of the Wexford port in their regular and determined search for undocumented migrants.
That means trucks and vans having to pull up alongside the Garda checkpoint where dozens of officers clamber around each lorry.
Armed with ladders, they stand by as a colleague cuts open the security tag at the back of each truck and unaccompanied trailer.
Then the doors are thrust open, a garda gets into the trailer, and a ladder is used to lean against the load and allow the officer on board to get a good look inside.
If clear, drivers then have to face Customs.
And there they face not only the gut feelings, intuition — call it what you want — of Customs officials, but you also have to contend with Gus.
The sniffer dog is a bit of a local celebrity, as his help in the biggest seizure of contraband at Rosslare this year is a haul of 2.7m illicit cigarettes.
At least 5.8m cigarettes have been seized at the port this year so far, and almost all of them are from passengers — predominantly Eastern European truck or van drivers — on the Cherbourg to Rosslare ferries.
Activity at the port has increased massively since Brexit.
If any port in Ireland is experiencing the Brexit bounce, it’s Rosslare.
In his end-of-March, post-Brexit trading briefing note, Freight Transport Association Ireland general manager Aidan Flynn noted a 100% year-on-year increase in the amount of freight trade moving directly between Ireland and continental Europe.
This is supported by Rosslare Europort offering 14 sailings a week between Rosslare and the continent.
Weekly sailings to northern France from Ireland increased from 12 in January 2020 to over 30 per week in early 2021.
Sailings have since increased and there are now more than 40 roll-on, roll-off and passenger ferry services in and out of the Rosslare every week.
Glen Carr, general manager at Rosslare Europort, says the increase in demand for services from the port has been — to put it mildly — “unprecedented”.
The sailings include daily services to Fishguard and Pembroke in Britain with Stena and Irish Ferries.
In addition, there are more than 12 weekly services to mainland Europe and ports Cherbourg, Bilbao, Dunkirk, and Roscoff with Stena, DFDS, and Brittany Ferries.
And all that means more work for the port’s 12 Kalmar and Terberg Tugmasters.
No sooner are cars and lorries leaving ferries, including Stena’s huge Estrid, that tugs are hurtling up the ramps to bring out unaccompanied trailers that will be left in a bay at the port for collection by a truck.
It’s the same system, or thereabouts, that operates at Dublin Port.
And many of the trailers that get taken off there come through the Doyle Shipping Group’s container terminal at Ocean Pier.
It is, effectively, home to one of Europe’s biggest short-term container parking lots.
With some 4,500 20ft-45ft containers being held at any one time, this is where a variety of goods we all want delivered into this country are dropped off to be collected every day.
Watching it in operation is to watch what is very much the business end of the logistics industry in this country.
Huge cranes take containers off a steady stream of ships, stack them five or six high along a carefully worked out series of lanes.
Trucks then arrive and get in line ready for the cranes to “collect” a container for them from any one of a number of the stacks of them at the terminal.
The trucks then position themselves under the cranes, the container is lowered onto their trailers, secured, and then the truck departs the port.
Donagh Tarrant, who runs Tarrant International Transport with his brother Fergal, says the business has changed considerably since his father Liam set up the company in 1973.
Each truck is surrounded with CCTV cameras as much to protect against fraudulent insurance claims by other drivers as to monitor the truck from being boarded by undocumented migrants.
“The issue, while still present, of undocumented migrants boarding trucks and trailers from the continent isn’t really one for us,” says Donagh Tarrant.
“A lot of our traffic is now, since Brexit, from France or Holland direct to Dublin or Rosslare.
“It was more of an issue when we were crossing the land bridge, across Great Britain.”
But there are signs that could change.
Since January this year, the amount of business the company runs through the so-called land bridge is down to just 5%, with the rest direct through mainland Europe.
This is massively down on what things were like before Brexit: Then, some 80% of the firm’s exports to the continent would have been via land bridge because it is the fastest and the cheapest way.
Indeed, it is generally accepted that it is around a third cheaper in shipping costs than if companies take their goods direct to France, and bypass Britain.
By rights, anybody should be able to use the EU’s Common Transit system if travelling from Ireland to the EU via Britain.
The system is used for the transport of EU goods, which, between their point of departure and point of destination in the EU, have to pass through the territory of a third country.
The UK signed up to the procedure in January 2019.
However, to avail of it, you need a dizzying array of codes and have to lodge a bond. You are also liable to penalties if you reduce or add to your load along the way.
Basically, you are only supposed to travel in from one port and leave by another, with no deliveries or collections on the way.
“We are set up to transport across the land bridge but there is little or no appetite from the customers to do it at the moment,” says Mr Tarrant.
“This is because few of our customers really want the hassle that can be involved.
“This really kicks in if you have a last-minute shipment and with all the form filling and declarations needed to cross the land bridge if you need to vary your load.
“But we are trying to encourage our customers to use the land bridge and, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if companies will; start to go back to using it again.
“By the end of the year, when things have settled down more, the numbers using the land bridge will increase 20%.”
Mr Tarrant says he has noticed a slowly growing number of companies starting to go back to the land bridge.
“It works for some companies who are prepared or able to be more flexible,” he says.
“Indeed, we have offered to take over small loads to see how we get on.
“Others are still reluctant to because they are just so used to not doing the paperwork.”
While legitimate trade has its ongoing headaches, there seems little let up on the attempts by some people to try and get illicit goods into the country.
And luck wasn’t exactly on the side of at least one of them the day the visited the port.
Revenue officials seized over 18,000 cigarettes and 85 litres of wine at the port.
They were discovered when Revenue officers stopped and searched a Slovakian-registered van that had disembarked from the Cherbourg ferry from France.
The search, which was carried out with the assistance of Revenue’s mobile x-ray scanner and detector dog Gus, led to the discovery of the cigarettes concealed within the load.
A Slovakian national in his 40s was questioned.
How did they clock their target in the first place?
Turns out the reason why they stopped the man in the first place was a result of... routine profiling.