1. Pick a dedicated member of staff to oversee Brexit preparations.

2.   Secure key pieces of information

• Secure your EORI number - you need this number to move your goods. It's quick, free and easy to obtain from Revenue or HMRC.
  
  
• Classify your goods - all goods have a commodity code. Get the codes from Revenue or HMRC. You can then use this commodity code to find out the duty for your goods by visiting InterTradeIreland’s free tariff checker.
  
  
• Find out the origin of your goods - this will help to identify whether they qualify for lower or nil customs duty. For more information visit Revenue or HMRC.
  
  
• Consider whether you are eligible to use any customs procedure.  There are a number of ways to make importing and exporting easier (if your goods qualify). For more information, visit Revenue or HMRC.
  
  
• Apply the correct customs procedure code (CPC) for your goods.  Find out more at Revenue or HMRC.
  
  
• Find out if your employees need to register for the EU Settlement Scheme.   Find out more at EU Settlement Scheme

3. VAT and Duties

Apply for deferment accounts for VAT and Duties. Visit Revenue or HMRC for more information.

4. Prepare for customs

• Familiarise yourself with the customs declaration and how they work
• You need a customs declaration to import or export your goods. Click here for help with customs declarations, including step-by-step videos on what information you need and how to complete Customs declarations.

5. Transit procedures

• Find out about transit procedures and how to apply for one from Revenue or HMRC. This can take several weeks to set up, so act in good time.

6. Get ready to transport goods

• Choose whether to appoint an agent to manage your transport. For a list of specialists, visit representative bodies for Ireland and Northern Ireland. Note that many of these agents can manage your customs declarations as well.
  Check your driving licence - Immediately post-Brexit, UK licences will not be valid for those who are resident in Ireland so you should apply to exchange your UK licence for an Irish licence.
• Get your Green Card - Northern Ireland drivers will need to carry a green card (for proof of insurance) when travelling to Ireland. To get a green card, you should contact your insurance provider.

Bitesize Brexit

Visit our Bitesize Brexit section for some more useful steps on getting prepared for Brexit.

Brexit Advisory Service

InterTradeIreland can help businesses prepare for Brexit through a range of supports and services suited to all, including funding up to €5625. Find out more at iintertradeireland.com.  Our dedicated Brexit team are here to help, just email brexit@intertradeireland.com or telephone 028  3083 4100 (048 from Ireland)

Since its creation, InterTradeIreland, which primarily assists small businesses in Ireland and Northern Ireland to explore cross-border markets, develop new products, processes and services and to become investor ready, has overseen an average annual 4 per cent increase in cross-border trade and recent figures show a record high all-Ireland trading market in excess of €7 billion for 2017.

Over the past two decades, InterTradeIreland has engaged with 42,000 businesses across the island and directly supported around 9,000. Those businesses have generated over €1.2 billion in business development value through additional cross-border sales, investments or efficiency savings and have created close to 16,000 jobs in the small business sector across the island.

The wider trade flows across the island have progressed and cross-border trade has more than doubled over the last 20 years, benefitting the over 90 per cent of small businesses that make up the cross-border market. InterTradeIreland’s research suggests that those businesses that trade across the border on the island receive an average 9 per cent productivity uplift, increase the likelihood of job creation and have a doubling of turnover.

“Our supports facilitate small businesses to get on to the export ladder. We know from our research that 75 per cent of businesses that have gone on to sell off the island took their first steps on the export ladder through entrance into the other market on the island.” says Aidan Gough, InterTradeIreland's Designated Officer and Director of Strategy and Policy.

Supports

InterTradeIreland operates two pillars of support - trade and innovation.  Under trade, the Acumen programme assists businesses to develop new markets, new customers and new sustainable sources of income on the island, while Elevate offers funding for specialist sales and marketing support to grow micro enterprises.

Under innovation,  InterTradeIreland has a number of support programmes in place for business innovation and growth, including the FUSION and Challenge Programmes. InterTradeIreland's Funding for Growth team helps growing businesses access the finance required to achieve their ambitious plans.

Valuable Research

Such supports are tailored to and underpinned by a strong evidence base.   InterTradeIreland places a high value on its research which informs their understanding of the all-island market and programme development.  InterTradeIreland’s  All-Island Quarterly Business Monitor ensures that the organisation remains “on the pulse” of small business sentiment across the island.

While the value of trade has changed dramatically, so too have the intricacies of the market. Highlighting the major shift in cross-border trading on the island in the last two decades and also a significant change in the complexities and interconnectedness of supply and export chains, Gough points to research which shows an increase in cross-border goods trade alone of €1.6 billion in 1995 to €3.7 billion in 2017.

The 2018 Cross-Border Trade and Supply Chain Linkages report by InterTradeIreland outlined that Northern Ireland accounts for 10-12 per cent of total exports from Ireland to the UK as whole and accounted for 7-8 per cent of imports. The report also found that a significant share of cross-border trade is accounted for by businesses that trade in both directions, with two-way traders making up around 18 per cent of firms but accounting for over 60 per cent of exports and 70 per cent of imports.

Given their understanding of the closeness and importance of the economic ties linking Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain, InterTradeIreland’s role is even more important since the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

Brexit

“We recognised early on that businesses were not getting ready despite the fact that Brexit could pose a considerable threat to their existing business model. We found that businesses were not preparing and weren’t factoring in the risk,” says Gough.

InterTradeIreland has recently released research which examines the capacity of firms to absorb shocks.  The research outlines that just over half of Ireland’s goods firms have at best a mediocre ability to absorb shock and that more than 7 per cent are extremely vulnerable to any post-Brexit fall out.

Recognition of the overwhelming nature of Brexit for small firms and the opportunity to still identify exposure and mitigate risk is the basis for InterTradeIreland’s enhancement of its Brexit supports. Through InterTradeIreland's enhanced Brexit Advisory Service, businesses can secure up to €5,625 of funding and benefit from a new free bespoke online learning tool (Bitesize Brexit) which breaks down practical steps to prepare for Brexit into bitesize chunks which can be readily understood and actioned.

Opportunity

InterTradeIreland’s recent work has not solely focussed on helping small businesses to mitigate risk but also to identify opportunities going forward.

“We are in a very different place than we were 20 years ago and those relationships that didn’t exist across all spheres of business and research activity now do exist. Whatever new trading relationship emerges post-Brexit, businesses will continue trading across the border and we will continue partnering with these businesses to deliver mutual value to both Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Find out more about how InterTradeIreland can help your business at intertradeireland.com

I am the CEO of TechIreland – a fairly recent move for me. I previously managed the start-up supports and funding at Enterprise Ireland, who invest over €30million a year in start-ups, so I’ve a good appreciation of what’s needed to grow a tech business.

TechIreland started originally with the aim of tracking and promoting the Dublin start-up ecosystem and over the past two years we have extended it to cover all of the Republic.  Funding is just one indicator, but it is a very important one.  It is a strong indicator of economic activity and investor sentiment.  Tech start-ups and scaleups typically need risk capital to grow quickly.  A healthy start-up funding picture is an essential ingredient for future high growth companies. 

We are now building out our coverage of Northern Ireland so we can give a whole-island picture of the tech start-up and scale up ecosystem.

Why has TechIreland expanded to all-island coverage?

For us, expanding our understanding is a pretty natural development.  We are living on a small island and we need to make the most of our natural advantages.  The start-up community on the island is already fairly-well connected, many investors operate on both sides of the border, but there is lots of room for improvement.  Extending to all-island is something we had planned but we probably wouldn’t have undertaken it quite so quickly if we hadn’t been approached by InterTradeIreland who encouraged us to do so.  InterTradeIreland saw the benefits of connecting the innovation and start-up community on the whole island.

What are the  benefits for tech businesses in Northern Ireland?

There is no cost for the companies to be on our platform, we are a not-for-profit whose objective is to support the tech and start-up ecosystem by informing them about their sector, and promoting the importance of the sector to investors, VC, government agencies, planners etc.  While there tends to be a lot of coverage of the big investments and the large success stories, there is no single source to go to for information, if for instance you are a tech business or an investor or formulating policy and you want to know;

• How much investment went into start-up and scaleup business in N. Ireland last year?
• Where is the investment going – how much into the greater Belfast region, how much to other centres? What sectors are getting the investment?  What technologies?
• How many blockchain business are there in N. Ireland, how many IoT (internet of things), how many med-tech, how many travel-tech etc?  And how much investment have they received, how many employees do they have, are they currently looking for investment or talent, etc?
• Planners and policy makers want to identify areas that need more support, how different regions compare with others on the island and with regions in the UK and internationally.
• Advocates for the sector can speak with more authority when they can cite real numbers as opposed to mere opinions.

Actually, your reader’s business may well be already on our database – we have been tracking investments into N. Ireland businesses since the start of this year and we are now tracking 200 companies, all start-up and scaleup product companies.  Our data all comes from public sources – newsfeeds, press-releases, VCs, the financial press.  If you want to get your company onto the platform, just create a profile here https://www.techireland.org/user/profile