Brexit has a big upside... duty free for us in Britain!

A SMALL silver lining in the dark cloud of Brexit was revealed yesterday – it will mean the return of duty free shopping on trips to Britain.

But travel industry experts do not expect a return to the ‘booze cruises’ – where people made day return trips to Holyhead just to stock up on cheap bottles of spirits and 200-packs of cigarettes.

However, the savings will be substantial. A 70cl bottle of Jameson costs €18 duty-free at Dublin Airport – around €7 cheaper than the supermarkets – while 200 cigarettes cost around €52 compared to €140 in shops, an €88 saving.

The duty-free allowance will be 200 cigarettes and four litres of spirits.

Talking about the free-trade deal the EU agreed with Britain, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said yesterday: ‘There will probably be duty free, by the way, whenever we’re able to start flying again. There may well be duty free between Ireland and Britain.’

While a spokesman for the Department of Finance confirmed: ‘The default legal position under EU law is that a duty-free regime applies to passengers travelling from an EU Member State, such as Ireland, to a third country. Therefore, a full dutyfree regime will apply for passengers travelling between Ireland and the Britain from January 1, 2021. This does not apply to travel between the Republic and Northern Ireland.’

The rule- change could mean a l ucrative market f or Ireland’s airports as last year almost 34m passengers used Dublin Airport and a third of those were coming from or going to the UK.

A spokesman for the DAA, which operates Dublin and Cork airports, said: ‘In time, potentially that would be an important revenue stream when normal travel resumes.’

Travel industry expert Eoghan Corry said: ‘ People see duty free through the prism of their memory and what’s happening now is completely different.

‘The reality is that the big German supermarkets have transformed our way of buying wine and spirits.

‘In the 80s, duty free was so much cheaper and there was an exoticness about it that you had these crazy things like the ferry companies filling up their boats in winter in low season with people and travel off to Holyhead and back again on the same day. Those days are gone.

‘ Even when you travel to the Canaries or Norway, you don’t see the craziness anymore, the clunking of bottles onto the aircraft. Some of the airport retail people will be happy it’s back but I don’t think it will make a blind bit of difference.’

‘It does not apply to Northern Ireland’