In an effort to help businesses and intermediaries develop capacity to complete customs administration post-Brexit, the Irish government launched the Clear Customs initiative in early August. The initiative has been developed to address the significant risk identified in Brexit contingency planning that there will not be enough customs agents to cope with the expected increase in customs declarations from 1.6 million to 20 million once the UK leaves the EU.

As a part of the initiative led by Skillnet, businesses are being offered two main supports:

• An essential customs training programme delivered nationwide over six weeks providing skills necessary to make customs declarations
• Customs Financial Support payment to assist with the costs of hiring or assigning new staff to customs roles. The payment can be up to €6,000 per employee that completes the training programme – up to a maximum of 10 employees.

Expressions of interest for the customs training programme and Customs Financial Support payment must be made via the Skillnet Ireland website (www.skillnetireland.ie/clear-customs) before 20 September 2019.

Readers should note that businesses will need to meet the following eligibility criteria:

• must have an EORI number from Revenue
• must have a CRO number
• must be registered with the Company Registration Office and incorporated in the Republic of Ireland at the time of application
• are providing freight, haulage, logistics services to, from or through the UK, or
• are providing customs intermediary services or
• are currently directly engaged in the import/ export, or are facilitating the import/export, of goods to, from, or through the UK and which will require new or increased customs clearance capacity