 I'm absolutely delighted that this event, this last event, is Pascal Donahoe, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, speaking on this enormous topic of challenges and opportunities facing the European Union in the light of Brexit. I first came across Pascal when he was chairing the sole Committee on European Affairs in the Eroktas. I had been at her at the time and I had heard him speaking on radio and picked up the phone there and then I rang him. And 15 minutes later we were sitting there and having coffee together in Bagot Street. That's how great friendships develop. I have to say he's an extraordinary man. He's one of those who has dedicated, and it's the only verb that can be used, dedicated his life to the public good. He gave up a very important and successful career in the private sector to enter politics and he had to take enormous risks in so doing with his career. And he became a member of the Shannon, as I've just said, and went on then to be elected as a deputy for this constituency, which we're so happily situated. And his promotion, his rise has been quite rapid since then. And I think in recognition of his very great skills, his intellect and his commitment, as I said earlier to the public good, I'll just say one thing, which is that I heard him speak. I was on the same platform at McGill, McGill Summer School last June, in Glentys. And he gave one of the best speeches I've ever heard on this very topic. And it was clear to what it was he was saying, because it was question and answers as well afterwards, where what it was was in his head and had me written for him by somebody else. It's very important in the world of politics that we have such people, especially now at this stage. He's going to deal with something as profound a challenge as this country has ever faced in peace time. And I think that we are extraordinarily fortunate that we have the Minister to help us think our way to the future. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And I want to thank Brendan for his introduction, much of which is undeserved. But you were all correctly gave a round of applause to welcome Rory into his new role as chairperson. And if I could say as somebody who has been involved in European affairs and the politics of the European Union now here in Ireland for a number of years, that Brendan Halligan has been a hero in the relationship between Ireland, Europe and the European Union. Ambassadors, Senator Neil Richmond, ladies and gentlemen, I am really pleased to be here with you this afternoon to speak to you about Brexit, about the prospects for Europe, the prospects for Ireland. And of course, I'm particularly pleased to be doing us here in my own constituency in Dublin Central, to which you are all very welcome too. We can't trust the evening news. We can't trust our politicians. Our universities, the gateway to a better life are rigged against us. We can't get jobs. This isn't some libertarian mistrust of government policy. This is a deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society. Ladies and gentlemen, this quote is from Hillbilly Energy. It's last year's seminal book by J.D. Vance on American politics and culture. And as it is in America, so too it is in Europe. Because this view is entirely consistent with what we heard from some during the Brexit referendum. And indeed, the Bruegel Institute, the Brussels-based economic think tank, recently published an analysis of the voting trends during the referendum that showed, and I'm quoting, that a 1% higher poverty raise boosted the share of leave votes by 1 percentage point, going on to say the result highlighted poverty as a determinant of leave votes. So our task in not just the months ahead, but the many, many years ahead in this post-Brexit world is nothing less, I believe, than to restore trust in the institutions that underpin our society and our economy, and to show, and to better show, that they can actually work. And I say this because I believe it's imperative that we have to recognise the very stark reality of what is unfolding in front of us. At many points in the last 12 months, many of us, myself included, said that we couldn't believe the things that have actually happened. We couldn't believe the fragmentation of Doyle-Aaron, that at a time looked it might deliver a government. We couldn't believe the decision by a majority of the British people to leave the European Union. And we didn't think it would happen that we would see the election of now President Trump on a policy platform and the campaigning and governing style that is very different to anything we have seen in recent American politics. Now there have been acres and hours of comment on these electoral outcomes. But I think what has been less frequently commented on is the economic context against which these outcomes have happened. Because this context is that national income growth and employment growth are all realities here in Britain, across the European Union and in the United States. It's an empirical fact that more of us are working and fewer of us are on the dole than was the case in 2008 and 2009 when the world economy was so severely derailed and in such crisis. Two million jobs were created in Britain between 2010 and 2015. In the United States 11 million jobs were created under President Obama. And in the EU, Euro stuff estimated last September that there are now over 232 million men and women employed throughout the Union, which is the highest number ever recorded. And these are all economic facts that would have appeared impossible back in 2009 when the economic mood and vista was so, so dark. So this poses, I believe, two crucial political questions. The first question is, if despite the return of economic growth, we are now witnessing a continued and deep mistrust of what some call the establishment, what will happen when the next economic downturn or crisis hits? And the second question is, if the Great Recession asked if our economic institutions could change and adopt, maybe the coming years will ask exactly the same of our political institutions, of our national and our European political institutions. And how Ireland and Europe responds to Brexit may well offer the defining and common element to the answer to both of those questions. So 2016 will probably be remembered as the year in which populism founded its people and the people found it. A research paper from the Harvard School of Government estimates that populist parties captured about one in every eight seats in recent European elections, with a share of the vote rising from 5% in the 1960s to over 13% now. This also disguises the fact that support and influence are two very, very different things. It's arguable that the rise of UKIP, for example, didn't see the party win power but did see the party win the argument. John Judas, who's a former editor of the New Republic and has written a superb book called The Populist Explosion, defines populists as those who assume a basic antagonism between the people and an elite. This is at the heart of their political identity. And he further defines us as an approach that creates demands that will not be satisfied by incremental progress but rather must be delivered now immediately and in their entirety. And this definition has been added to by John Vernon Muller, a professor of politics in Princeton University, who said and I quote, all populists oppose the people to a corrupt self-serving elite. But not everyone who criticizes the powerful is a populist. What really distinguishes the populist is he and he alone believes to represent the people. And this approach is evident in many places across Europe, including, I believe, in our own country. Too often, some in the political arena have claimed a monopoly on authenticity, where the compassion, not just the competence of those of us in the governing centre are challenged on a daily basis. But this challenge is so continuous that it poses not just a challenge for those seeking to lead our parliamentary or our governing institutions, but for the very credibility and functioning of those institutions themselves. And this is a particularly profound challenge for the European Union because, as Jean Monnet rose, nothing is possible without men and nothing is lasting without institutions. So where do we begin? We are now living through the post-Great Recession era, where our economy and our society are healing but not yet healed. Another era where the cause and effect of a growing economy and political incumbency no longer applies. Look at Denmark, for example, where an unemployment rate of less than 5% saw the far-right People's Party double their support and win nearly a fifth of the vote. Similarly, the Democratic Party in the US would point to the huge economic advancement over the last eight years and scratch their heads about the recent eviction from the White House. So these types of electoral outcomes are products of a new political dispensation where economic growth no longer automatically means healing and where governments cannot count on growth to secure a desired outcome at the ballot box. And I believe the greatest danger we now face is one of complacency. The idea that these issues will go away, that ultimately everyone will, for want of a far better phrase, come to their senses and that the huge changes that people are experiencing in their lives, in their careers, in the social interaction they have with their partners, their families and their friends, will not change the institutions in which they operate. But of course it would be incredible if this wasn't the case. It would be incredible if the forces of deindustrialisation, of the digital revolution, of multiculturalism left politics and politics unchanged and unaltered. And where perhaps people like myself have been complacent is the inability of those of us in the political centre to match the passion of non-mainstream politicians, especially as non-mainstream passion is wrapped around false hopes and dangerous ideas that will ultimately hurt the very vulnerable people and those groups that populists claim to represent. What we have been complacent on is missing the due focus on the link between job growth and also income and change in people's living standards. Equally, however, it remains the case that the collapse of growth makes that healing process so much more difficult if not impossible. And this is why it's so important for the politics of the centre to assert itself again, to tell its story, we have to find our voice again. We must make the case for a global, for an interconnected world, for Europe and for an Ireland that opens minds, that addresses poverty, that promotes diversity within society. We must reassert the case that interdependence is a source of strength, not weakness. We must make the case that market economies working hand in hand with a welfare state, with proper regulation, is still the best way to deliver jobs. We must ensure stronger public institutions that deliver fairness and deliver better public services and that regardless of the challenges that face us, that face us as citizens, as communities, our countries, no matter how small or how big, that we do so much better together than on our own. And if we don't do this, our political institutions will face the same questions our economic institutions have struggled to answer in recent years. A diverse intellectual framework, which has been capable of being harnessed by the populist sentiment exists, Reiser is from the English philosopher John Gray, the French novelist Michelle Holbeck, the German economist Wolfgang Streck, to the work of only last week of Pankaj Mishra in his new book The Age of Anger, questioned the very viability of our economic, of our political, of our social order. And the fusion, or even the fission, of that thought with political populism is underestimates us as our grave risk. So we must stand over our values, values that are central to European identity and the European Union project. I believe those values are part of our DNA in Ireland, and I also believe they are in our national interest. And that's why our future is in the European Union. It's in asserting our confidence in these values and asserting that we have confidence in Europe. And this is why the government is prepared and continues to prepare for British withdrawal. We have established our headline priorities, which are namely minimising the impact on trade and economy, protecting the Northern Ireland peace process, maintaining the common travel area, and influencing the future of the European Union. We will negotiate from a position of strength as our member states firmly in and committed to the Union. And of course what will also be critical will also be focussed on the future relationship between the UK and EU. And that is why we are engaging extensively with all other member states, with the European institutions, with the Barnier Task Force, and will participate fully in all of the structures of the EU in getting ready for those negotiations, all of which will expand, will intensify when Article 50 is triggered. We will pursue our national interest and we will pursue our priorities fully within the legal and policy framework of those negotiations. And within this what will be vital is our commitment to protecting the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement, its core principles, as well as supporting the stable operation of its interlocking institutions, all of which is particularly important given the current situation in the North. A very practical, real-world example of all of this is the cross-border peace and interreg programs, which I have responsibility for. These are two North-South cross-border programs that are managed and implemented by the special EU programs body, one of which is the cross-borders body established under the Good Friday Agreement. Since the Brexit referendum, we have secured these programs for the short term. The medium term is to ensure the full implementation to 2020, the long term is to make sure they have a successor. And if you ever wanted a tangible example of how important this is, it was in my recent visit that I had to Derry when I walked across the peace bridge, to my left I had a DUP Lord Mayor and to my right I had a Sinn Fein Minister for Finance. On a project, on a bridge, enabled by the European Union. But all that being said, let's be really clear. We cannot be under any illusion about the scale of challenge that's ahead. However, I also believe we cannot assume that the EU we are now planning for will be the same as the EU of today minus the UK. We can't assume that maintenance. And I spoke earlier of how our economic prospects are brighter now than we might have imagined a few years ago, and we now have to have the same conviction, the same attitude to complacency now about our political prospects. Because as we see a new set of values asserting themselves elsewhere, Europe has to assert its values and what we believe in and what we stand over for. And this is why it is right for people like me, and indeed I have a duty, to challenge the new populist orthodoxy that only total immediate change, no matter how unsustainable, is the way to make things better. Incremental change may be slow, but it's not the same as no change. It's solid, it's lasting, it's real. Look at, for example, the change in the Irish national debt. Once larger than our national annual outpost, and in danger of tipping our entire economy into a fiscal tailspin, our national debt is now stable, it's falling, and not through the catastrophe of an unplanned sovereign default, but by steady maintenance of our spending control and by steady reduction of our deficits. Look to a job creation. Our unemployment rate fell by one tenth of one percent every month for four years. No Big Bang, no Silver Bullets, just real, meaningful, sustainable improvements. A tale which is replicated across many parts of Europe. And we achieved these improvements by having the courage of convictions, bywithstanding the lure of the eye-catching headline or the applause of the crowd. As a centrist politician and as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, I have to balance competing principles every hour. But that doesn't mean I don't have any principles. Simple solutions rarely work, but that doesn't mean I believe no solutions can be found. And above all, we in the centre who are saddened by Brexit must adopt a tone that is moderate but needs to be more firm. And this is because the nature of our political discourse has been coarsened. It's as if the need for decency has been replaced by the need for 140 characters or less. It's as if the need for meaningful debate has been replaced by the need to garner the most likes or win the most page impressions. The French philosopher Raymond Aran who fled the Nazi occupation of his country but recognised the dangers of communism as well and knew a thing or two about the need to avoid a political extreme set. Freedom flourishes in temperate zones. It does not survive the burning fate of profits and crowds. And if it was true then, it's true now. So while it is now radical to be moderate, we can't seek to credibly meet the needs of those we represent. But most importantly will now be the need not just to deliver and maintain growth but to deliver inclusive growth. And this means recognising that a job does not necessarily mean security and we need to ensure well-paid jobs, sustainable jobs that engage the intellectual, the artistic, the creative, talents of us all. And this is recognised in the European Commission's Europe 2020 strategy which says that and I'm quoting in a changing world we want the EU to be a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. We recognise it here as a government in Dublin's North Inner City through the Kiran Mulvyn North Inner City initiative or through the government's action plan on rural development. Inclusive growth means investing in infrastructure and in education in people and institutions to help them realise their potential. Look for example at our national and European efforts to build the infrastructure of the future. Our national capital plan which I will review and strengthen this year which sees billions invested in our roads, our public transport, our schools and our hospitals by the start of the next decade and indeed in the coming years. The Junker plan of investment across the EU will see half a billion euro worth of investment by 2020 to benefit 290,000 small, medium enterprises which in turn has been credited with the creation and maintenance of 100,000 new jobs. And as the UK looks to leave the single markets we should seek to deepen us. We should seek to make it better. True for example to digital economy and the EU should now be as ambitious with trade plans as any other country any other country in a changing global economy. And this ambition has to imply to education. Last week for example Minister Bruton published plans to deliver 50,000 apprenticeships and traineeships by 2020. Meanwhile the European Investment Bank over the last five years has provided more than seven billion euro for investment in universities in Europe including 512 million euro in Ireland. Ireland is actually the fifth largest country of operation for the European Investment Bank for funding for universities and only in November agreed loan funding for Trinity College for 70 million euro and UCC and Cork for 100 million euro. That's inclusive growth in action. This in turn has to facilitate a stronger link between job creation and then the maintenance and enhancement of living standards and income. However we can only have this inclusive growth if we have the strength in our public finances to fund us. Which is why our membership of the euro zone is central to realizing our prospects and this is why eliminating the need to borrow from volatile financial markets to pay for day-to-day public services and wages is so vital. It's the economic foundation upon which we build all else. So ladies and gentlemen I want to leave you today not with a vision of dystopia not with a vision of an unfounded utopia but with a vision of something we must strive for. I want to end by talking about the role of Europe of Ireland of the member states of the European Union in a changing world. We must recognize this changing world now. We must recommend that the levels of and the forms of political and economic integration are now changing and that Ireland has to borrow a phrase skin in this game as we have built 40 years of economic development on the stability of that integration. But I remain confident that if as the desiderata tells us we speak our truth quietly and clearly and listen to others we and all who support the shared liberal and democratic values of Europe and the European Union can prevail but we must recognize the political challenges in doing this. In 10 or 20 years time Europe may well be an open trading bloc and continent in a more closed world or it may be that our success is seen in contrast to the failure of the new protectionism and others come back to this way of thinking but mark my words one way or the other the European Union that former communist states saw enthusiastically to join the European Union that secured peace and the absence of bloodshed the European Union that promoted and won the rights of women to equal pay and the rights of workers to fair treatment are achievements and values that we should stand for not shy away from and this is because politics lives in the moment it flows from the past but always has to look to the future it looks to horizons that are bound by uncertainty and that we will never reach because the past to them is always work in progress but to make this work inclusive to make this work sustainable we must recognize the compass that can give this journey direction values values that are european that are irish and values that we must stand by and for thank you