This year, on the eve of the Balmoral Show, I attended a function in the iconic Titanic centre in Belfast. The guest speaker was the managing director of Thompsons, Declan Billington.

Thompsons is the largest feed mill in Europe and the firm has an enormous amount at stake in the Brexit discussions.

He gave the most realistic assessment of what the existing situation was and how the apparent contradictions of the UK leaving the EU could be reconciled with the absence of a border on the island of Ireland.

Billington pointed out the undeniable truth of 30% of northern milk coming into the Republic for processing and the dependence of northern pig abattoirs on southern pigs as well as 50% of the Republic’s flour coming from Northern Ireland.

Overlying Billington’s fears was that if a border between north and south were set up that inevitably there would be increased levels of smuggling of items such as fuel, alcohol, tobacco, which the House of Commons had found was already involving former paramilitaries.

While his ideal was a full customs union, he put forward a point of view which incorporated most of the new position adopted by the British government – a customs partnership where the UK would collect duties and levies on behalf of Brussels as the VAT system already operates but that the island of Ireland would be a single unit for animal and plant health purposes.

This closely mirrors the present situation and it would leave the UK free to do its own free trade agreements though Billington wants agriculture and food excluded from any free trade agreements negotiated by the UK – this, in my view, will be the most difficult point to sell to UK Brexiteers but the proposal builds in a coherent way on how the discussions are developing in Brussels and Dublin.

Until the mechanics are clearly worked out, we look like having a long transitional period but the seeds of a possible solution are there.