Marks & Spencer say customs checks means 20% of products are not available in Irish stores

M&S sandwiches require three vet certificates to get them into Ireland 

A haulage truck operated by Marks & Spencer. Such vehicles entering Ireland can require up to 720 pages of documentation. File Picture: Bloomberg

Marks & Spencer has hit out at the bureaucracy required to adhere to post-Brexit rules between Ireland the UK which means 20% of its product range cannot get into the country.

The British retail giant said mammoth paperwork must be completed for every truck that enters the Republic of Ireland and that a simple error on one page means that truck could be delayed by up to 48 hours with some of the contents having to be destroyed.

"At the moment, only about 80% of our product is getting into Ireland so 20% doesn't arrive at all. So obviously, the Irish customers are not seeking a large part of the M&S range," M&S Chairman Archie Norman said, speaking on BBC Radio.

Mr Norman said it was not the rules of the Customs Union that are the issue but the 'pointless' enforcement of them.

In a letter to Britain's Brexit minister David Frost, Norman said M&S now completed 40,000 pages of customs documents per week to get goods into Ireland, and that will increase to 120,000 when the full rules for Northern Ireland start.

One error on a form can lead to an entire truck of 650 items being stopped, he said. M&S has cut 20% of its range in Ireland.

Mr Norman said it was not the rules of the Customs Union that are the issue but the 'pointless' enforcement of them. He said every wagon of M&S goods entering Ireland requires eight documents with 720 pagers per truck. He said that if one of those pages is typed up with the wrong colour then the entire truck is rejected until the issue is rectified. He said the delays can sometimes last up to 48 hours at which point some of the trucks' contents may have to be destroyed.

"Take a sandwich. It may have mayonnaise, butter, some cream or some meat in it. Sandwiches typically require three vet certificates," he said. "We have given up exporting half our sandwiches to Ireland because we can't get them through."

"We need a common-sense approach to enforcement. For a start, none of this is on digital. It's all on paper. Which is absurd in this day and age. All of these documents should be able to flow digitally."

Mr Norman also said the issues with exporting into the Republic of Ireland stand as a warning to what will happen in Northern Ireland if full custom checks are introduced. He said the planned introduction of full post-Brexit checks in October would be "business destructive"

"I really, really worry about the visibility of this because ... everyone in Northern Ireland is going to see, very very visibly, the impact of Brexit and the protocol because there will be gaps on the shelves," he said, adding that they had already delisted some products for Christmas."