Revenue has today (5 January) provided important advice to hauliers and truck drivers moving goods to, from or through, Great Britain (GB) into Ireland by ferry.
The advice it said is in relation to the following: creating a correct Pre-Boarding Notification (PBN) and the importance of checking their customs channel prior to disembarking.
Following Revenue’s advice, this will firstly ensure that vehicles carrying goods to and from GB will be able to board their scheduled ferry without any difficulties and, secondly, will mean truck drivers can present goods for customs controls, if any, on arrival with the minimum of delay, it said.
Creating A Correct Pre-Boarding Notification
According to Revenue, those responsible for transporting goods to or from Great Britain by ferry are required to create a Pre-Boarding Notification (PBN) on the Customs RoRo Service before the goods start their journey, and in advance of vehicles moving to the departure port.
Additionally, Revenue noted that it had previously put a temporary arrangement in place that allowed for the creation of a PBN for goods movements that began before the end of the transition period (31 December) and ended after that date.
This temporary arrangement was facilitated by allowing whoever was creating the PBN for a goods movement into Ireland to select an option of ‘Other’, it said.
This ensured the continued movement of goods as 1 January approached by providing the necessary details required to board the ferry.
As the overlap period for such goods movements has now passed, Revenue confirmed this temporary arrangement will no longer be available for all sailings departing GB on or after 6pm today (5 January 2021.)
Highlighting this change to reflect the end of the overlap period, head of customs at Dublin Port, Tom Talbot, said: “We had put a short-term arrangement in place to help trade in the initial days post 1 January to avoid movements getting caught between 2020 and 2021 requirements. However, this was of necessity: a time-limited arrangement which will come to an end later today."
"As such, it is important to note that in order to create a correct PBN, and to ensure the efficient movement of the goods, it will be essential that the MRNs [Movement Reference Number] for each customs declaration for all consignments in a vehicle are included when creating the PBN. Ensuring this will avoid an unnecessary call to customs,” he added.
Checking Customs Channel
Revenue reminded truck drivers today of two key things to keep in mind to ensure they can access their customs channel:
- Have the Pre-Boarding Notification Identification number (PBN ID) for the vehicle or trailer
- Check the customs channel no earlier than 30 minutes prior to disembarking.
A detailed step by step guide on how to create and correctly populate a PBN will is available here.
Revenue has also set up a dedicated email support service to deal with all PBN related queries, which is available here.
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