 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the Institute for those of you who haven't been here before and not so many I think. Housekeeping first, please like myself either turn off your mobile phone or turn it to silent and the emergency exits are the same as the ordinary exits and the doors through which we came through. But be assured that underneath the original 18th century Latvian oak planks there is steel reinforcement. Our guest today is Jenny McCoy, Chief Executive of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation who is well known to everybody. He has a varied and distinguished career both in academia and in business that I won't go through. He's a person of authority. He's been described by the Irish Times as one of the 50 people who run Ireland. I have to have a discussion with him because I don't think we agree on who the other 48 are. But he's going to talk to us about a recent publication by Ibeck on Ireland in the EU 27 and dynamic future which I think is something that does need to engage us very closely. To the point where I'm delighted to say the Institute and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have agreed on a project which we will carry out to look at the future of Ireland within EU 27 after Brexit. Because although we're concerned about the immediate issues of what's going to happen about Brexit, which personally I think is going to turn out badly for everybody, we do need to think quite systematically and quite seriously about what kind of EU 27 we would like to see and what kind of role we see Ireland playing in an EU 27 without the UK. There's a lot that can be said about that. We'll get around to it later on. But first I think we'll hear Danny present his idea of the Ireland future. If you take 15, 20 minutes, Danny, speech will be on the record and the Q&A session afterwards will be off the record. So it'll be closed off then intellectually speaking. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the invitation. As Alan kindly gave me the introduction, I'm fortunate to be the CEO of Ibeq. By far the largest business representative of organisation in Ireland but also actually one of the largest in Europe, which is a reflection of the scale of the business footprint here in Ireland. A disproportionate size of business actually to the scale of the population. There is no other part of Europe that has the concentration of the scale of business that transacts from Ireland, both in its global nature but also in its reach and the diversity of sectors that are covered. So Ibeq represents over 42 different sectors and part of the work behind this project of Ireland and the EU, we spoke to our members who try to get a sense, particularly driven by President Junker's call for the various scenarios or various aspects of Europe. And kind of cut the chase I suppose in those options if they were discreet. The business community really would prefer the option of carrying on. And of course when you, you know, setting up scenarios for future strategies, there's always one that's kind of the status quo and of course that's the one you're not supposed to like because who wouldn't be for change? Why else would you be going through the expensive exercise of the strategy just to be where you are? The equivalent of driving a thousand miles to be photographed in front of your car. Why would you take the journey if you're just going to be in the same place? But actually when you stood back from where the European Union has emerged to, sure there are lots of problems, lots of inconsistencies, lots of things not to like, but actually what is to like and what are the successes are immense and really dominate and are seen to dominate by the business community. So the view in having a look at do more with less and less and more, yeah there are nuances in what is in this document but really if you're looking for the nutshell, the Irish business community like the way the European Union has been developing. It's steady, strong, dealing with the crisis. However, and it's always at the back for mind, there still has to be a question in the future of Europe for Ireland is that all of this future of Europe debate would probably come to the same conclusion with Britain and the European Union. Obviously something has changed or is about to change. There could be a destabiliser for the Union but particularly difficulties for Ireland but still even cognizant of that when we talk to our members and the focus groups here still believe that our destiny very firmly lay in the European Union because not just of its past successes but also for the future and see that as a dynamic future and so the priorities is you know I don't want to rehearse it, we all in this room know about the transformation of our society on the back of EU membership. There's still a belief that there's a lot more particularly along on the innovation etc that can be tapped into by Irish business even in the absence of Britain being in that Europe. It's kind of difficult to see so I'll just go through this is the only other slide I have here so these six priorities on the future of Europe I might just touch upon them and can do more in the Q&A but effectively the first priority that was coming through right across the sectors was to unleash the potential of the single market and particularly digitalisation. It's still the case when we look at the four freedoms that in the services-based economy predominantly and increasingly where the value added in many societies are embedded in the services component that Europe still has quite a bit to go in completing that single market particularly around services and obviously with the advent of digitalisation being pervasive right across all kinds of businesses the larger the block the better and particularly again just to you know reiterate what we what we all know is that Europe as a share of the globe is declining that's very true in terms of population dynamic but increasingly that occurs then in terms of economic activity so that even in a globalised world's expanding the dynamic for the European Union should be trying to get bigger in the things that we are good at together but still having acknowledgement of proportionality and subsidiarity to decide what are the things that will be distracting in the next decade away from this innovation and dynamic Europe that business would like to have so the unleashing of the potential will be very significant also then with this protectionist trend I suppose from across the Atlantic in the current administration Europe really can play a leading role globally in trade and investment and of course one of the features here that sometimes get lost in the debates is investment is actually more significant than trade investment is the first issue and trade increasingly flows the world of David Ricardo and Adam Smith of countries that were very defined by their natural resources and by specialization trading with each other was coming from the natural assets of that country Ireland's only natural asset bar the human capital that we have you know it's probably just grass and remarkably in the last number of generations we've actually made that grass work for us significantly and transformatively from just feeding live cattle to be our largest export in the 1970s we now have one of the most significant dairy industries globally on the back of infant formula and sports nutrients and so on if you look at glambia is now the largest the largest sports and nutrient company in the world and haven't even talked about the Kerry group or even bigger again so that's trade and the natural trade but actually Ireland is more significant trade flows in terms of biopharma and medtech but those are investment decisions originally so to look at trade flows and get focused in on trade can sometimes blinker us to this kind of geographies and natural assets increasingly the big issue for global trade is actually the story around investment investment decisions drive trade flows and so being very much yes tariffs and so on are you know much more in our conversation than there would have been before brexit everybody's getting a bit more familiar with what customs unions means and what a tariff is and what's a non-tariff barrier we still need to focus in that investment is actually the most significant feature off the global world and so making europe an attractive place for investment and the conditions around investment are very significant and that's why issues around the capital markets union are very very significant for europe to be that league the other feature that was coming through quite strongly was the embracing of a competitive a taxation policy and again obviously this wouldn't just be the little islander view of Ireland on this although we quite happily give expression to that it's actually looking at the world as it is not as how you want it to be and you know the the continuous discussion of common consolidated corporation tax base as a kind of a lurking agenda out there gets at the root of this idea that unions should share question is what's the appropriate sharing and what's the appropriate unit of analysis you know what is to the state and what should be to the union I think these will be debates that will rightly in Ireland should be very much in the vanguard of this emerge through time but very often and we've seen this particularly since President Macron has moved in the absence of other leadership in Europe for a while on the digital taxation issue and again this is obviously seen as sensitive in an Irish context given the presence of Google's and Facebook's and Amazon's and so on is that this becomes very intra European conversations and whilst understandable given the nature of digitalization and the high-tech companies mainly being American it actually has a real danger for the whole European project and that's sometimes missed and the following is the logic of it in try to tackle digital taxation and where the revenue should be attributed to there is a view that it should be at the consumer consumer who gives the information with their data and so on that they give over the resource and where are the vast bulk of the consumers that should be some kind of population driven metric for the attraction of this revenue that may have some impeccable logic within Europe to larger member states but if you take that to its logical conclusion as a global taxation model which will get hammered out in the next decade probably at the OECD level Europe is really following that principle will be handing over huge amounts of revenue to the emerging global population powers around the world thereby putting huge stress on our European social model which continues to need that kind of resources particularly in a declining population in Europe so going after one solution on today's problem could in fact for Europe unleash a much more significant issue for where does the value of German car sales actually occur to where does the revenue go back to it's a it's a dangerous proposition German car industry have come to our come to our aid on this particular front and that particular proposal looks like it's going nowhere fast but we again need to be not just a little islanders part of it it is actually a comment for the wider European family the last three in conscious of time is the respect the member state competencies to design labour market and social policy I think this is probably much more pervasive for Irish businesses as a result of Brexit than perhaps it has been in some of our contemporaries really a worry to ensure that the kind of creep of of legislation particularly in the labour market doesn't give quite serious unintended consequences one example that's that's in a European level we've lots of interesting let's put it that way in a vertical as proposals from private member bills around the labour market in Ireland at the moment from our political parties including postal code redundancy that's my term depending what your postal code was you get laid off depending what what your home address was you might be entitled to different level of compensation from the same employer for losing the same job at the same time go thank um but that yeah that's not a European one the European one is the definition of a worker and that's a particularly interesting one for reasons we can understand giving some egregious behaviors but taking it to its logical conclusion right now this takes in all kinds of contracting even at the level of the household potentially having people on site doing what would be clearly seen as temporary jobs and may actually confer a relationship between employer employee depending on where this line gets drawn so again there's quite a lot of debate in in in Europe which would be more restrictive on labour market social policies and again the view coming back would be its principal subsidiarity to reflect the type of societies and the type of models that have developed true time and how people organize their social policy and their labour market policies rather than having one size fits all clearly on champion of better regulation i can assure you despite the popular narrative most exist this is a very obvious point we think most exist in businesses i think regulation is a real positive because they're currently living and dealing with it and incumbent with it challengers that hate regulation actually in trying to break in um most businesses while you hear them gripe about regulation actually the vast canon of regulation is something that people working with it have already embedded into their business model and disruption around that is actually one of the last things they want or need so while you hear a lot of cut red tape bonfires of the regulations well that is true at the margin it still remains the case that most businesses see the canon of european regulation um as a net positive and a beneficiary for the business model right so sure they gripe with stuff but actually there is a realization that the success of europe has actually been as much driven by regulation as the advantage of scaled consumer markets and so on so i think that's a point so the champion of of better regulation certainly comes comes out very strongly from that and obviously regulation then that is reflective of a change in global market around innovation data digitalization there would be a sense of european being able to act faster on regulation but it's not a no regulation would see regulation as a kind of very net positive for for building a strong a strong business the final piece was ensuring that the fiscal rules are ensuing with all member states and in the irish context i suppose this really kind of manifested but the one that i'm actually talking about here is being in a society with an expanding population that the fiscal rules around current stroke capital expenditure could be more nuanced to take account of an expanding population to take what are necessary capital investments not to be included in a rule for what really is dealing with cycles and the kind of current expenditure so kind of the way businesses would deal with capital expenditures themselves they do not see that necessarily reflected in the fiscal rules and believe then that they're too binding as a result so that's kind of just a kind of top of the priorities on the future of europe the document and and so on behind this is a bit more extensive and goes in i've just been really touching over the top and giving you a flavor it's so much more contained within but again to summarize we launched this in brussels in march we'd very significant presence of it was launched by president tajani michelle barnier was a summer up of it and four commissioners were at the event that's a very big statement about ireland but also about business in ireland i think there is a realization that ireland is a frontier economy in many many ways and a lot of the marginal things that we're talking about here when it comes to taxation digitalization expanding population type of restrictions you could get no better place to have a debate on the future of europe i would contend uh then ireland and so the irish business community really wants to be part not just of europe but of that debate and this is our first foray into that conversation thank you