 Rhaiddoedd yma, dweud hynny. Mae yw Francis Rowan, rydyn ni'n ddechrau Cymru'r Y Ia Ia. Rydyn ni'n dechrau i'ch cymdeithas iawn. Rydyn ni'n ddiddordeb yn ymddangos o rydyn ni'n ddiddordeb, rydyn ni'n ddiddordeb yma yw'r seishun. Yna'r wych hwnnw'n rydyn ni'n ddiddordeb. Roedd y gofodd, o'r Brexit, y dych chi'n dechrau i ddweud yng ngoswyd yn siaradol rydych chi ddweud yn ddiddordeb. ac yn oes yw'r angen yw'r angen yw'r angen yw'r angen yw'r angen yw'r angen. Yn ystod, os ydych chi'n gweithio yma, rwy'n credu Dahio Iechaeli, yw unrhyw ymddir, ymbastor ddiwg, a'r head o'r unrhyw ddiwg ddiwg ddiwg yw'r angen yw'r angen i gydag, sy'n gwneud. Dwi'n credu'n gwneud yn ystod yn y dyfodol, a dyma'r ddod y golygu isol, a dypa'r angen, mae'n gwneud. Yn ystod, ydych chi'n gweithio ein arddangos, ac mae'n gweithio eich cwnau. Felly mae'n wneud y gynedd. Mae'n cyfath, yn ystod y lluniau, a gyda'r Lawb ofen yn oes, ond yn ddod â'n oes a gyda'ch gydag yma, ac mae'n indicatech ar gyfer sydd rydyn ni'n bobl oherwydd bod rhai ond yn ystod, ond y'r Lawb ofen yn ystod ychydig. Felly, dyna'r ddweud ddim, ond nhw'n mynd i'r amser i'r byw, ond, dwy'r amser yn ei ddim yn bwysig, a dweud y byddai'r ffordd yn bwysig, bo'r cyfnodd yn ymlaen. Felly, rwy'n gofio'n gael i'n gweld i'r prydau'r bod yn ei ddweud gael ac i'n ffyrdd ystafell ar gyfer Cyfnodau A ond rwy'n gofio'n gael gael bod amser beth fydda'r cyfnoddol ar ei ddweud, wedi'u gweithio'r cyfnoddol. Os ydych i'n dwylo'n adreffu'r ysgol yn ei chylo'r cyfrifodau cyfnodd gyfan, oherwydd mae'n dwi wedi bod yn oed yn gallu gael ar gyfer y ddechrau a'r ysgol o'r cyfrifodau a'r ysgol o'n ysgol. Felly y gyrfa'r unrhyw sy'n ziwais i ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddefnyddio. Dyma'r ddweud. Mae'r hyn yn ymddydd yn meddwl gweithio ysgol yn ymddiadau gyda Paul Gillespie a'r ysgol, mae'n mynd i'n meddwl i'r cyfryd yn y cyfrifio'r ysgrifennu a'r ysgrifennu. Mae'n mynd i'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r cyfrifio, ond mae'n meddwl i'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio. The negotiations between the EU and the United Kingdom, as we all know, have been effectively at a halt for a considerable period, really since last December. So what I want to do now for a very short period because I'd much prefer to engage with you is just to say something about the political system in the United Kingdom and the political conditions in the United Kingdom, firstly. And then secondly, maybe just have a look at the statement which came out of checkers last Friday and see what it all means. The Tory party and the supporters of the Tory party in the United Kingdom are split down the middle. And the same to some extent is true of the British Labour Party. Now, if you look at the results of the referendum, Leaviside Scotland, Leaviside Northern Ireland, the actual majority in favour of Brexit in England, which is where it matters, is much higher than it is for the United Kingdom as a whole. And I think that vote in England represents a political reality in England. They were never particularly happy in continental, in tying themselves to the continent. They were never particularly happy as members of the European Union. And they had a very special deal within the European Union, which no other state had. And the Union was prepared in the final negotiations with Cameron to give them more, which yet they still rejected it. I think there is a deep seated English nationalism that's reflected in this referendum, which goes back to the old imperial days or wherever. But I think it's fundamentally, I think it's English, English nationalism. The Tory party is split ideologically as a result. If you've been looking, for example, over the last few days at interviews with Rhys Bogg or interviews with Duncan Smith or interviews with Redwood, those people are not open to discussion. They're not open to dialogue. They're ideologs. Now, the question is, what will they do? They were stuck for a long time in the negotiations with Europe and there effectively had been no advance, very little advance since last December. Most sensible people in the British government realised that. And what happened in checkers was, and it didn't come easily, it took Mrs May two years to get to checkers. What happened in checkers was a realisation by the British government as it's actually said in the statement that they needed to put something new, something developed on the table in order to enter into negotiations. We saw Davis resigning last night. Will others resign? I'm inclined to think not. I'm inclined to think that Boris Johnson, were he to resign, would have resigned first. I may be wrong. Will the party split at this stage? Again, I'm inclined to think not. Rhys Bogg last week threatened Mrs May by referring to the split in the Conservative Party in, I think, 1846 on the repeal of the Corn Laws. He made no reference as to why the British government was trying to repeal the Corn Laws at that stage. It was in order to allow cheap food into Ireland to deal with the famine. I think the main reason why they won't split at this time, and again I could be totally wrong, is a gentleman called Corbyn. They are terrified that they might lose the next election. Duncan Smith quoted in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph said that he expected that the Tory vote would be down 25% in the next election as a result of the agreement in checkers. So it gives you some notion of what's driving these people forward. Now if he's saying that and he's a leading Brexit here, is he likely to split the party, cause an election and let Corbyn in? I doubt it. So my guess will be that they won't split. My guess will be that they will in a large measure reflect in the White Paper, which is due out later this week, the main principles which were agreed at checkers and that they will seek to engage with the European Union on that basis. Let me just, I don't know how many of you have read the statement, but what's behind it is very clear. It is, we have failed so far to engage with the European Union in a way which would provide for a useful basis for going forward. And therefore we have to provide for the Europeans a more, I just said the position needed to evolve in order to provide a precise, responsible and credible basis for progressing negotiations. So there is an acceptance here that they had to move. And it was very difficult I think for Mrs May to get here. And it's been highly choreographed over the last two or three months. And I think, and I prefer not to hear this outside, I think Ali Robin's hand is all over it. So the statement says that the government will publish a White Paper setting out this proposal in detail, but in summary there are four main elements. The first is a common rule book for all goods including agri-food. So free movement of goods. The second one is reciprocal commitments related to open and fair trade. They talk about a common rule book on state aid. Now if you remember the arguments for Brexit, one of them very strongly was that they would be able to break away from those state aid rules in order to provide themselves with more attractive goods for export. Cooperative arrangements between regulators on competition including commitments to upholding international standards and that they wouldn't let future standards fall before the current levels. Then they talk about a consistent interpretation and application of UK EU agreements and there's space here for the European Court of Justice. And then they come back to the thing that was already on the table which is a facilitated customs agreement. Now I think there is enough there to enable discussions to move on and I think both the UK at this stage and the EU, they really need to move those discussions on because time is getting very short. There's also a slight change of tone. The tone I felt from Britain over the last two years has been, it's been an internal debate with itself whereby they mentioned what they would like and they thought whatever they liked would be given to them pretty much willy nilly. I think they've learned very much over the last 21 months that to some extent this is an unequal negotiation that the other member states are actually stronger than the United Kingdom. It's been quite striking how this negotiation has been carried out by the European Commission and particularly by Barnier and the principles which were established earlier on did not move from them and I think it's been very good from a European point of view in the sense that the British have had to change the negotiating stance and get themselves to where they are now. What's likely to happen? I don't know. There certainly is not enough here from a European perspective. There is an acceptance that some of these positions will change as the negotiations go on. But I think by and large I think it is an acceptance by the United Kingdom government that the stance that they had in the past needed to change and as far as I can see I think she's brought most of her cabinet with her. But there are a lot of occasions between now and the end of the year between now say March, April and next year where she could fall. There will be votes on customs this side of the summer in the House of Commons and then when all of this stuff comes back to the Commons and the Lords in October, November. There's a lot of stuff to be done. If any of you, for example, saw yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, there were three or four pages of vitriol against the British government. It was quite astonishing, vitriol. But I think it's come to the point where the British government has to make its mind up. I think frankly she's done a reasonably good job and I think they have decided to negotiate on a more realistic basis than they did in the past. Having said that I think there is something else that has happened within the United Kingdom and that is the vast bulk of those people in the House of Commons who were remainers and probably still are remainers. I think they have accepted that Brexit is going to happen. I don't think there is that many anymore within the House of Commons who feel that at this stage anyway that they can remain in. I think there is an acceptance, a much wider acceptance now than there might have been, that Brexit is going to happen. And I think what they will argue for, particularly in the autumn, is the selfless possible Brexit. And at the end of the day, that's in our interest. Thank you. So, the first paper we're going to have is from Carl Lucy, and it's on the agri-food sector, which we know is an absolutely crucial sector for Ireland, our biggest trading sector with Northern Ireland and the UK and the EU, with products travelling in both directions and in particular products travelling to Europe via the land bridge through the UK. So, I'll ask Khan to make his statement. And just remember that again, where the discussion is on the record, are you saying, is the discussion is on the record? Okay, that's fine. Thank you. Thanks, Francis. Excuse me. Yeah, in this paper, I look at the broad options for reports Brexit, EU-UK trade relationship, and it says how they will affect the agri-food sector. And I suppose, as you may guess, things are generally more complex in the food sector in Europe than for the general, other non, the general industrial sector, for example. I suppose the special factors I mentioned are, first of all, the EU common agricultural policy relies very heavily on the customs union and particularly the common external tariff, which provides relatively high protection for a range of products, particularly the ones we're very dependent on, like beef and dairy products. The single market is also important because, of course, we have common regulation for food safety, animal health, plant health, environment. Now, just looking at the immediate issue of the UK leaving, the UK is only 52% self-sufficient for food imports from the EU, the rest of the EU, a count for about 30% of that market. So you can see there's potential for big disruption. Now, Irish agri-food exports have relatively high dependence on the UK, and that's set out on the table in the paper. As the chairperson mentioned, the island of Ireland has a highly integrated agri-food market. Finally, and not unimportantly, in my view, is that we shouldn't forget that prior to EU membership, the UK operated a cheap food policy based on liberal imports from around the world. Now, future risks can be grouped on the three broad headings, and the first of the obvious ones, which are tariffs, regulatory checks, country of origin checks, and administrative delays. Maybe less obvious is, depending on what the UK do in the future, there's the risk of possible reduction in the value of the UK food markets. And also down the road, there is a risk of destabilisation in the UK to the seven food markets. Now, I look at three fairly standalone options here, and I'm sure you can well appreciate that this was written long before last Friday, so I won't be specifically referring to that. Option A, essentially, is straightforward. The UK would either stay in the Customs Union or agree a new Customs Union agreement with the EU. Both I mentioned that that would really need to observe the EU common external tariff, and in addition to that, there would also be a regulatory alignment between the UK and the EU. So, in that situation, it's very straightforward. There would be no tariffs on the EU, UK trade, no need for regulatory or country of origin checks at the border, and the value of the UK food market would be maintained. And from the agrifood perspective, that obviously is the satisfactory option. The second option, which may be more likely in practice, is essentially based on the UK, EU free trade agreement. Both, I wonder, would allow the UK to operate an independent global trade policy, and on the positive side, that generally would remove the need for tariffs on trade. Now, regulatory borders would control, so still be needed, unless, of course, you supplemented that agreement with also an agreement on regulatory alignment. Now, what you would need, though, which would be a new dimension, is country of origin checks at the border to distinguish between products that generally came from the UK and products that are just being transited through the UK. There would be a brickler problem as well, and that is one of trade displacement. In other words, the UK under that situation, if they wished, could decide to export all their own farm projects to the EU and supply their own markets by imports from the world stage. So, I think very quickly there would be calls for import courses to apply an exports from the UK to the EU and probably vice versa. There's also the big risk in that scenario of the loss of value in the UK market. And free trade might sound very benign and friendly, but a free trade policy is far from a good outcome. The precise effect would depend on the details, but, you know, as I said, it sounds friendly, but not necessarily a good outcome. Option C, and I mean, there's, from what Stuy said, and others, I mean, there is a clear risk of a no deal scenario whereby we will be reliant on the WTO rules. By the way, if you want to know, I think about how WTO works as Stuy's sub-time apparenties. Well, it says he was a former ambassador, and it works very slowly and very poorly, as I understand it most of the time. So, in that option C, essentially you would have WTO rules in place. You'd have tariffs on trade in both directions between Ireland and the UK. You would have regulatory controls on imports in the UK. The complex factor, I think, is that over time the UK could reduce its import tariffs either on the basis of the general most favourable nations clause, or even more negative more by the view that they could go off and do special free trade deals with supplier countries around the world. So, in that scenario, apart from all the complexities at the border, there is also the risk that the UK would no longer be a worthwhile market for the U27, but on top of that, bearing in mind, as I said, that Europe, including Ireland, supplies almost 30% of that market at the moment. That would need to find a new home, so there's also the risk of very substantial destabilisation of the EU 27 market. So, I'll stop at that, gentlemen. Thank you. When you look at the merchandise trade data, the thing that's really striking on terms of the island is just how much trade is in the agri-food area and how much the crossover relationships are there within that area. So, it's probably of all the ones, it has the most immediate impact, and we'll come back to this at a later paper, but it has the most impact on both consumers and producers, because you're talking about products that actually you might decide to defer buying a washing machine until next year, but you actually can't decide to defer food until next year, or a particular kind of food. Our second paper is on the single energy market, and this is work done by Joe Curtin, who's a senior fellow here at the IAEA and a member of the Climate Change Advisory Council. And just to those of you who are not maybe familiar with it, the paper is around for people to get it, and of course it's on the website, but the single energy market project has been one of the big successes of creating a sense of the island having the scale that can operate to a way that it didn't have previously. And the benefits of that have been around costs to consumers and also about security of supply. Now, even ahead of Brexit, we were already heading to more challenging topics in that area because of what's being done with the European energy market, and then on top of that we now get Brexit. So Joe's paper gives an outline of some of the issues that are involved in that, Joe. Thank you very much, Chair, for the introduction. As a pretty introduction, I'm going to focus on the electricity sector, so I won't be talking about the gas sector today, which is equally important. But one caveat before I begin, I haven't directly been involved in Brexit negotiations much as you might suspect, so I'm bringing today an outsider's perspective looking in. So that caveat aside, the background, of course, as Francis said, is that the single electricity market was launched in 2007, and this is a jointly regulated and operated electricity market covering the island of Ireland, and it arises from the Good Friday Agreement. So, as Francis said, it's been one of the key success stories of the Good Friday Agreement, and if not the standard substantive and successful area of collaboration between north and south. This new market has been also very successful, as Francis said, stealing my thunder, thank you. In the three pillars of energy policy, which energy and climate policy people talk about, competitiveness, security of supply, and sustainability or decarbonisation. So it's a considerable economic and political significance, and the two immediate challenges facing the market are, first of all, to this European target model which arises from the EU's third energy package. And this seeks to further integrate electricity markets across the EU. And this is why the so-called ISEM, which is the integrated electricity market, is coming on stream, and it's scheduled to come on stream in October 2018. And this will be compliant with the new EU rules. And the second big thing on the horizon to look out for is the north-south interconnector, because there's congestion in terms of electricity trade between north and south. There's a limit of 300 megawatts, and there's a demand for approximately 1100 megawatts of trade in electricity north and south. So moving on to consider how Brexit would affect the ISEM and electricity markets within the context of these two big picture developments. So there's been strong indications from all actors that ISEM should and will be sustained. The draft withdrawal agreement, for example, which was published in March, suggested that there would be, that there was a political agreement to maintain this EU's, for the UK to maintain membership of the EU's single electricity market. But of course the devil is always into detail in terms of how these political commitments are realised. And I want to focus just on the hard Brexit scenario, which is the one that obviously gives rise to the greatest difficulties, where a single market and customs union membership are not maintained. And ISEM could be particularly vulnerable in this scenario with regulatory divergence. And the harder the Brexit, of course, the greater the regulatory divergence, the greater the pressures to ISEM. And in the medium term, this is because ISEM would have to comply, obviously, with all current and future electricity market regulation emanating from Brussels. And this would fall under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. So if ISEM were maintained, but the UK leaves the single electricity market, it doesn't take a genius to work out that this is going to cause issues. So one solution would be to designate special status for Northern Ireland. In this case, the UK would have to accept potential regulatory divergence between the two parts of the United Kingdom, and we all know the red lines around that, particularly up north. And it would create a very unusual situation where Westminster would actually have to transpose EU directives for Stormont, because Stormont doesn't have that competence, which would not reply in the UK. So we can all imagine the political tensions that that might create, and I think we can question the political sustainability of that kind of arrangement. So the other, we'll say, more optimal option, even within a hard Brexit scenario, would be to maintain or to pursue market integration between the ISEM, which is Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the UK to create one electricity market, that Northern says, and this would be modeled on the Nord pool, which is an electric and Nordic electricity market. But the question around this is if it would be acceptable to the UK hardliners, and indeed would it be acceptable to the European Commission, which as we know has ruled out cherry picking aspects of the single market, which suit the UK. So problems about both of those potential solutions. So in conclusion, a hard Brexit, in a hard Brexit, the ISEM could come under increasing pressure over time. Chair, if I might be allowed a few more minutes, two minutes, perfect. So moving on to interconnection, as noted, there's an urgent requirement for greater interconnection between north and south, but there's actually three interconnection projects which are currently being considered at the moment. And these are called projects of common interest, and they have the full support of the EU institutions, and they are at various stages of planning. The north-south interconnector has jumped through most of the legislative and regulatory hurdles that is faced at the moment. And so the conclusion of the paper is that Brexit itself won't likely pose significant hurdles in the way of the north-south interconnector. That's not to say that there aren't other challenges that this interconnector, this vital infrastructure, faces, but the Brexit isn't one of them. The second interconnector that's being planned at the moment is the Celtic interconnector to connect the ISEM with France. And the third interconnector is to the UK. And long story short, the paper suggests, you won't be surprised, that for two reasons Brexit may affect the costs and benefits of these projects in various ways. So the first one is that projects of common interest need to be between two member states, so of course there could be project finance issues affecting further east-west interconnectors. The second is that Brexit likely increases the probability that there will be sustained electricity market divergence between the UK and the EU electricity prices. And this will create an incentive for Ireland to manage that risk of overexposure to UK electricity prices, and again would largely tend to suggest that it would increase the attractiveness of building greater interconnection, or any interconnection, actually, to the mainland European electricity market. So to conclude very briefly, in the short term, Brexit is unlikely to affect the two big things on the horizon that I mentioned, the North Side's interconnector and the launch of the ISEM in October. But in the medium term, there could be issues arising from our hard Brexit and regulatory divergence, and it could also affect the attractiveness of building infrastructure projects between the UK, and the EU. Thank you very much. And our third paper today is a paper by Edgar Morganroth and John Fitzgeraldon. It's been presented by Edgar. It's focusing on the distribution sector, which as I mentioned, is related to the agri-food sector, is one of the big areas where there's going to be a huge impact on Ireland. So Edgar. Thank you, Francis. Good afternoon. As Francis says, it's a paper jointly authored with John Fitzgerald who can't be here, so you can blame him for anything you don't like, anything that you do like is obviously mine. I start with the more general sort of point, and this is kind of important, not just in the context of Brexit. A lot of the discussion that we have seen over the last couple of years following the referendum has been about exports. Our exports are going to be hit, and that's the only way we're going to suffer. It's a very much a mercantilist view, and it's pretty much the view that actually Donald Trump holds. He only looks at merchandise trade and only looks at exports. And we forget that there are services, and we import things as well. And we know from trade theory that particularly small countries also need to import a lot. So when you look at the work that I have done going a number of years back now, five years I've been working on Brexit, I've always looked at imports and exports, and that includes a chapter in this book here that we published at the IAEA. And what we're talking about in this paper is really the imports dimension, and particularly in relation to distribution. So we actually import more, a greater share of our imports from the UK than we export there. And any trade barriers that might arise from Brexit are going to hit our imports just as they're going to hit our exports. So what's the implication of that? Now there are a number of different ways in which this is going to potentially hit, and there are also different types of sectors. So on the one hand we've got consumer products, things we buy in our shops. On the other hand we've got intermediate inputs that go into manufacturing. Things like raw milk coming from Northern Ireland for further processing in the Republic of Ireland. It's a sort of supply chain interconnectedness that Conn referred to earlier. So we've got consumers, we've got producers, both could potentially take a hit if there are trade barriers just through imports. And what we have done in this paper is really to review some of the evidence that is out there on this issue and also added some of our own thoughts on this. And when it comes to the consumer side in particular it's very interesting because the open borders and the fact that we have a single market has allowed this distribution sector and particularly retail to change its model of supply. Considerably because you can have a lorry load of all sorts of different products coming across a border freely. Whereas once you have a customs regime you now have to declare every individual product separately and it has to be testable. So if a customs official stops the lorry and wants to check whether you really have 10 boxes of whatever it is, cornflakes on the truck you've got to take them out. And that makes it really, really difficult for retailers in particular if they were to continue supplying directly from the UK to Ireland. So if you don't want to let's face it, UK retailers have a very dominant role in our retail sector. And we've recently done some work with colleague Martina Lawless at the Ysrae, which has looked at the potential impact of both the tariff barriers that might come and non-tariff barriers which actually turn out to be more important. Of course that's all in the context of a hard Brexit was obviously done before the recent checkers meeting, although I'm a bit of a pessimist in general when it comes to Brexit. So I'm still not convinced that I'm wrong on this. And it shows that we could end up having an increase in consumer prices, prices in the shops by 3%, maybe 4%, not insubstantial. And that's also in line with the evidence that we see from the US and Canada border where the border there adds 2.7% to prices. And that's before we've looked at the competitiveness effects on our industry and for those we don't have estimates as yet. So these are really, really important and significant shocks to the Irish economy and to Irish consumers. And they're not exports. And I'll finish, and I think hopefully I'm in time, the last sentence. One thing I think is really, really important to remember, even in checkers, whether it's before or after checkers, doesn't matter. Theresa May has always said she wants a deep and special relationship with the EU. What that really means is because she has the deepest and most special relationship that you can have. What she wants is a less deep and less special relationship with the EU. So whatever Brexit we're going to get, it's definitely going to be worse. And I'll finish there. Thanks. So those of us who don't necessarily approve of the Twitter sphere is the point where it's highly relevant. Can we just come back? We can come back to Boris at the end. I think Edgar's paper is actually something which all of us can appreciate as we've seen a change depending on what age you are in the room. But how deliveries to supermarkets are now made by large trucks late in the evening. Those trucks actually combining all those different varieties of things. And it's only because of the single market and the customs union that that could happen. And it's particularly following the single market that that has become hugely popular because of standards and regulation issues not being such. So it's kind of a reminder in all our lives of exactly that particular impact. Our final speaker, it's not related to a paper because the paper is around the room. I see that you have copies of them that has been issued by the Institute. But this final speaker is Rena Dwyer from the Enterprise Island. And Rena was at the IFA. She followed Khan over many years and was there as their economist. And she relatively recently joined Enterprise Island. And Enterprise Island, if you like, is sort of at the heart of responding to some of the issues, not the electricity issue, but the distribution issues, the food and the other trade issues that are relevant to Ireland. But I think what is the case is that Enterprise Island is trying to play a tricky role because we can't just go out and help every firm to cope with what might be scenario one, two or three of the types that have been mentioned now. And I think their approach has been around looking at what I think people like Edgar would have referred to as the no regrets strategies. What are the things that firms can be doing to increase their sustainability, their resilience, their ability to cope with whatever the out turn is? And I suppose business has been on the one hand wanting to get the best out turn, but on the other hand recognising that a long period of uncertainty is actually for itself a cost, a big damage that needs to be taken into account. So, Rena. So, thank you very much, Chairman. Thank you very much to the IIA for asking me to speak today, not least of which it's the first time I get to share a platform with Con Lucy, which means an awful lot to me. But anyway, I'm here today to talk about just giving an overview of the work that's being undertaken by Enterprise Island to support companies to respond to the challenges of Brexit. So, I suppose for anyone who wants to know Enterprise Ireland, what we do, we work with Irish exporting agencies to start, to innovate and to remain competitive international markets now and hopefully into the future. And if you take our strategy from 2017 to 2020, we set out some fairly ambitious targets. One was to assist our clients to create 60,000 new jobs between now and 2020 to grow our exports by 5 billion euros, to increase the level of spend our companies in the economy to increase their level of R&I expenditure, and then to inspire more of our Irish-owned companies to have global ambition. Building on this in 2017, in May 2017 and in response to Brexit, we set out a Eurozone strategy where we very specifically looked at trying to assist our Irish exporters in a pretty difficult way to increase our exports to Eurozone countries by 50% by 2020. We've approximately 5,000 companies on the books, if you want to call it that, and they're supported through a network of market and sector advisers across 10 national offices and 33 international offices. And why does Brexit matter to these companies? Because actually Irish-owned enterprises, as of 2016, approximately 35% of our exports still go to the UK. There's been huge market diversification a decade ago, that was actually about 45%, but it still shows the huge importance of the UK market. And these manufacturing and international-neutrated services companies are a critical source of employment in Ireland and job creation across the whole of Ireland. If you take 2017, for example, our client companies had their best employment figures ever, over 209,000 people are employed in enterprise Ireland companies. And we actually grew, and I was told was the first time it ever happened, growth in our client companies across all regions, across all counties and across all sectors. Always in the past, no matter how good things were, some county dropped the ball. But no, I suppose what I'm really saying is that, reflecting the growth in the international economy and in the Irish economy, 2017 was a very good year. And then you looked into 2018 and you're talking about what to do in the face of all this uncertainty. How do you really respond to Brexit? So our focus is firmly, it's a long-term thing on helping clients to build resilience to economic shocks in general, such as those emerging from any kind of Brexit. How are we doing this? Well, the focus is on three key areas. Can we support our companies to innovate, to be competitive and to diversify their global footprint? And we're doing this by introducing new supports and streamlining the ones that we already have. So under the whole area of market diversification, a key part of that is getting companies into markets, getting companies speaking to buyers and so on. So we have a record number of trade missions this year, and we have 200 international and domestic trade events scheduled throughout the year. We also introduced in early 2018 the Market Discovery Fund, and this is a fund to support companies to research viable and sustainable market entry strategies in new geographic markets. Because anyone who's involved in exporting knows it is hard to get into a new market and it's hard to stay in a new market as well. So the purpose of the Market Discovery Fund is to support companies to have a strategic approach to trying to diversify into new markets. And also recognising the critical importance of the UK market still, we've been looking at the opportunities that are there in the UK still. A great example being the Northern Powerhouse and the plans that the UK has and what sectors under that do we see potential for our clients? I mentioned already innovation. It's essential for companies. It is the jam on top where you are not just competitive but you actually hold your market share. You command a price that allows a company from Ireland to be competitive globally. And we work with our clients both to support in company R&D but really importantly to also collaborate with the higher education sector to drive innovation. And this ranges from everything because sometimes I think people might think innovation or research and innovation is something that only larger companies can do. This goes all the way from a 5,000 euro innovation voucher where a company and an institute of technology can do a small targeted piece of research all the way through to our 14 industry led technology centres, which are large centres for industry, whether it's the meat technology centre or the centre for applied data analytics, are supporting research on cross sectoral or within sector research that can actually help the entire sector to move up the value chain. And again just looking at what companies were saying to us Enterprise Ireland introduced in late 2017 the new Agile Innovation Fund to allow I suppose a quicker turnaround time and more targeted in company research to look at new processes and new markets. And then of course competitiveness. A renewed focus on competitiveness is something that has been key to the Brexit response because there are going to be cost challenges arising from Brexit. So companies are being supported to look at their operational efficiency through lean competitiveness programmes investing in their capital infrastructure and then critically importantly investing in green and sustainable infrastructure. So in terms of then kind of more targeted the things you'd hear about Brexit responses, since 2016 we have had a continuous programme of actions on the areas of Brexit supports. And because Brexit is uncertain the key aim has been to promote awareness among companies so that's the first thing just get them thinking about it and then to encourage action in areas that they can control that are specifically impacted by Brexit. Three of the key business areas we have focused our supports are financial and currency management, strategic sourcing because as Edgar mentioned the whole issue of the impact on imports and the key role that imports actually play on our export diversification is something that I suppose is important for companies to think about their exposure in terms of their import exposure as well. And then customs, transport and logistics. We have had a national prepare for Brexit campaign and under this as I said there has been a continuous programme of actions and supports introduced including things like the Brexit SME scorecard which has allowed companies not just enterprise Ireland companies but companies to go online and assess their level of Brexit exposure. And then the offering of a be prepared grant to support companies to actually once they know their exposure to start to put in place a plan to try and mitigate their risks. We have had action plan clinics around the country six so far and four scheduled and it's very interesting to see Brexit advisory clinics the numbers of companies are growing. The numbers of companies engaging and really getting into the position where they are taking action to manage the risks that they can is growing with a huge focus on the customs and logistics piece. Because there is the issue, the reality of it is we are talking about dealing with a third country outside of the EU and what that practically might mean. I should also mention I suppose as well that companies that do not fall under the enterprise Ireland banner companies of a smaller scale but who are kind of getting to that level. The local enterprise office supports these for Brexit supports and many of the supports that enterprise Ireland has developed as you are aware have been extended and are kind of right sized for companies for under the local enterprise office pillar. It shows I suppose as well the importance of actually having a joined up approach to this and making sure that our supports are consistent to our companies. Our response has also incorporated the development of our first international media campaign called the Irish Advantage if any of you have seen it. It's a great campaign. I'm not a media person at all but it's a lead generation digital campaign and it has been targeted at buyers in countries in different sectors. Perhaps actually because you're not international buyers you won't have been aware of it but it's a really targeted value proposition to international buyers as to why they should be sourcing their materials or services from Irish companies. Then in addition to that the government has of course sanctioned in the past number of budgets additional funding for personnel both here and overseas. Chairman I'm going to conclude now to say that enterprise Ireland is very aware that further efforts are needed to ensure that companies are resilient to the economic shocks presented by things such as Brexit. We're really we've moved in 2018 to support companies to take action and manage in as far as possible the risks and challenges presented by Brexit. And we'll continue to work with our companies to drive their innovation, their competitiveness and their diversification fundamentally to help them to have the key attributes of internationally competitive companies. Thank you very much. So before we open the floor I'm minded by by Rhaena's comments to make to make two points. One is that it will talk about clouds and silver linings. I think one of the silver few silver linings in the Brexit cloud which is very dark is that actually it has shifted our thinking to the more medium to long term. I think one of the effects of the financial crisis was that everybody became looking at the end of the quarter looking at the end of the sixth month and looking at the end of the year. And in some sense this the Brexit shock both in the case of government I think and in the case of enterprises got them out of that. They realize that there was this time horizon out there of a Brexit coming which basically forced you to lengthen your time horizon because if you didn't you weren't going to be there after after two years. The other point though which I think is is is is a really important point for people thinking of just in what the what the challenges particularly for SMEs and for Irish industry. There is no such thing as a European market. There are 27 markets out there. You have to penetrate that market. So the notion of oh you were selling into the UK now go sell into Europe as if Europe was a market. So in fact the level of strategizing and investment. It's just something that I've often been struck by the way people sometimes slightly flippantly say well Irish industry should have been doing this as if it's straightforward. But in fact it's tactically around which of those markets do you go in. Where in those markets do you try to make your your your your mistakes. So this discussion is on the record so that everybody knows that. So now with that statement can I open the floor to questions to anybody including we can also go back and ask ask the whether he has has any further thoughts to make. But let me start the question here. Start the question here in the in the middle. So my name and the director of retail Ireland. We're a division of Ibeck. Firstly I suppose our interest most naturally is within acres paper and the John's paper. And I think firstly to welcome it. I think it's very important that we have the conversation about the potential impact upon the distribution sector and the retail sector. I think this I agree with you. I think there's been probably an underutilization of that conversation around what will happen to the domestic industries here and those industries and sectors that are reliant on imports. I think it's important and timely that we have that conversation. I think the other missing piece of the jigsaw here is around the impact on the Irish consumer. And I think they've been notable in terms of their absence around what does you know the level of discussion we've been having since the vote in the UK in terms of what the impact will be on them. There's been a lot of discussion again around exporting industries and the secondary impacts perhaps in terms of employment etc. But you know in terms of the money in people's pockets what will happen there. I suppose the question I would have for Edgar is around the impact in terms of consumer sensitivities. In terms of price sensitivities. In terms of the elasticities of demand and disappearing down an economics rabbit hole. I suppose have efforts been made to explore that in terms of where is the tipping point. And I appreciate it will be different across categories. But is there even a kind of blanket tipping point that we can look at in terms of where consumers will no longer take the pain of whatever the impact may be in terms of both tariff potentially and non tariff barriers also. And what might that might look like. I suppose our companies at the minute are trying to do that individually to look and see well the products they're bringing into the state. What is the potential impact in terms of their cost base. And how does that pass. How is that potentially passed on to a consumer. And I suppose I asked the question in the context of the last 10 years. It's just been particularly difficult for our retailers in terms of recouping costs within the marketplace. And we do have a consumer that's absolutely reluctant to accept price increases. So I'm just wondering is any effort been made to explore that. I suppose to put the consumer from the center. That's a good very good question. Our analysis of the product by product basis. But obviously there are assumptions behind it and elasticities as you say behind it. We have a set of elasticities. I think one would really like to do a bit more analysis on some on those for the Irish market in particular. The other thing of course that's very difficult to know as a researcher standing back is how much of that increase costs increase will actually be passed through. Will it be all of it or will it be part of it. And that depends very much on competition. And I know you tend to think that there's a lot of competition in the Irish market because you've got a lot of individual retailers. But actually in terms of the retail chains the number of big players we actually have relatively little competition. And if they're all hit by the same shock and they all pass on the price in the same way it makes actually no difference except for the consumer. And so that's a question that is difficult to answer. Who can absorb some of it. Would they all be hit by the same shock. Obviously the percentage of goods that come from the UK differs by different chains. Tesco and Marks and Spencer's probably have a greater share than the two German multiples. So and so on. So you get you get that there's a lot of detail to this. And yes we we I think need to do some more work to unpack that. You also asked about the consumer itself. Consumer sentiment is obviously influenced by things that are going on in the economy. We only looked at the first round effect of a price change. If you had simultaneously as we have shown elsewhere had an impact on GDP and incomes you'd get a double one. Just on that. Is there anything known about I'm just talking about a worst case scenario now Brexit and where we're trying to sell into the UK. Is there anything known about the supply into the UK in terms of I'm thinking food products in particular that could come from non EU. Is that I mean they must be estimating that because that's the relevant one for them but that spills over on to us. You can look at this and there's a second dimension to that which is tastes. I often bring this up by and I'm German or it's been here a long time but I am German. I grew up with I grew up near Dysseldorf and Dysseldorf has its own kind of mustard. I like that stuff. My wife grew up in Ireland Irish grew up in Ireland. She likes English mustard. So we have the mustard fight all the time. And of course you can only get the English stuff here. So that's what we have. If you only like English mustard you'll take the price increase. That's the way it will be so that again this is an important thing because tastes do differ and that's actually the point you are making earlier by the 27 markets. If you're selling something successful in the UK it doesn't necessarily mean that a German customer is going to buy it as well. Question here on the right. Thank you very much for all the presentations. Fantastic. Andy McGuire from the Dublin Institute of Technology. I'd like to pick up on one of Edgar's last points. It's a simple one but it's an important one. Brexit will be bad. It's the time with what Khan was talking about. The agrifood sector is our largest indigenous sector. It's tied to the land along with tourism. Is there any good scenario for the agrifood sector over the coming decade as far as Brexit is concerned? Or will they have to take a step back do you believe? Well I think as I was trying to paper the best scenario would be the extremely soft Brexit. I mean I noticed for example on Saturday when the French Italians were reporting what happened on Friday. They put the word soft in the vertical covers so there's a lot of kind of loose talk around what's being soft. Even if the UK goes side the customs union that is a problem sooner or later. So I mean it would need a very benign situation of the UK to sustain the customs union or a green de facto. The same bilateral customs union movement plus regulatory alignment. Now the regulatory alignment part of it seems to be probably the slightly easier part of it to get agreement on than the other part, not least because the UK seems to have hankered to this great ambition of doing independent tradies which might not be that productive for them down the road. Can I just come in for a question to Joe? The issue of regulatory alignment I think really comes into the fore for how important it is for us where we're exporting food and products across Europe and we small companies who are doing it into many markets and the idea is to diversify that further. If there were different standards in the UK which remain still a significant market to us to the continent it would raise the cost base of our production here enormously. So it's a very very significant one. I became conscious of this when I was involved in the Scottish Government discussions because they like us export a lot of food products and alcohol products and we just realized the extent to which common standards keep your production costs in four. If you've got to run multiple lines of production in order to deal with different markets your cost base absolutely shoots up. So it goes back to the taste piece again. Joe? At the risk of getting run off the stage with Con and Rowena I would come at this from a climate policy perspective and two-thirds of Irish peace farmers lose money. The cost making industry adds very little. Certainly very little of the value is captured by farm families that are in business because of the common agricultural policy which sustains their lifestyle at the expense to the EU taxpayer. So I could see Brexit posing a little bit of more pressure on the agricultural sector to start to perhaps diversify, look at different opportunities in the different land use options that are not necessarily locked in to doing something because we've always done it or at least we've always done it since milk quotas were introduced in 1984 and double the size of the beef herd and now we seem to think we have a divine right to kind of keep the beef herd at that level. So from my perspective there could be opportunities here to avoid paying $6 billion in fines between 2020 and 2030 for failure to comply with our climate change targets if Brexit were to actually incentivize a little bit of innovation in the agricultural sector. Rowena, wearing your former hat and indeed your present hat, both hats at the same time. A two hat in person. Okay, probably we're smiling more to what Jo said. Two hats and no gloves. Yeah, the thing about it is there's a difference probably between sectors quite rightly innovating and I mean I was speaking about it in my speech and then I suppose the potential for changes to the rules of trade that would fundamentally do so much damage in the short term to a sector that wouldn't make sense. I mean just in terms of where the food sector sits in the Enterprise Ireland pantheon our food companies, our Irish owned food companies represent 50% of Enterprise Ireland's exports. It's such an important sector economically to Irish owned enterprise and so while I absolutely recognise Jo's point there and the fact that we do need to be investing more as a sector and throughout the food supply chain in a more sustainable means of production and so on, it's hard to see the benefit of the UK market being a driver of innovation. I think it could just do so much damage in the short term if that market were cut off. So that would be why I would unfortunately see for the agriculture sector we need, the sector needs a price of that as far as possible keeps the UK market open and keeps the value of that market intact because without the type of innovation that Jo was talking about. Can't we come back to re-enter the front? I think we could have a press course in determining whether farmers can survive without direct payments or not very quickly because clearly UK government have said they're going to leave the common agriculture policy likely to go off as a consultation process ongoing but it has made it quite clear that the income support type direct payments which are the biggest single component of farming income there and here won't be any more and what he's offering really are fairly selective environment-related direct payments now even though they have a better scale of farming in terms of the average size I'm not too sure, I mean I've looked at the income data for the UK and I tell you when you take out the EU direct payments out of it there isn't a lot left so I think it will be an interesting observation hopefully from our point of view from the outside to see what happens. Edgar, did you want to come back in and then I've got something here? It's a degree of bad with moving from a status quo to something that is worse and it ultimately is down to the outcome we're going to get from the negotiations where we're going to end up. OK, one question here, one question here. Niall Walsh, I'm a member of the Institute. Diversification away from the British market was supposed to have started when we joined the EEC. And it did. No, too slowly, but it did start, I'm sorry, it did start. Too slowly, and yet we arrived in 2018 and we don't have a proper motorway down to Ross Lear yet and look at the state of the harbour down there. The second point is that England is becoming a nastier country to live and work in. My daughter who works in London was recently called a farmer and some friends of mine who are French architects who have been working in London for the last six or eight years have recently returned to France because the atmosphere was becoming actually nastier. And the final point I'd like to make is Enterprise Ireland is fine when it comes to the big, sexy companies in Ireland but micro SMEs are not getting the supports they desperately need. OK, thank you. I think, Rhun, I think you're firmly in your camp. I want to address two of those. I suppose Enterprise Ireland supports companies from ten Goyes upwards and the local enterprise office which is the office's network which supports further approximately 30,000 companies is for companies who have the ability or potential to export any below that. So I don't have our average size but I know that the vast majority of the 5,000 companies I've mentioned are well below 50 employees and as I said, Enterprise Ireland supports companies at the ten employees at upstage. So most of our companies fall into the small category of sector not even intermediate. And I think it's very important as well, I was at a talk last week in terms of our supports available to small companies where a company in Wicklow, Ventac, they're a fantastic company who are providing acoustic solutions. They have 50 employees, that's it. They are currently engaged in lean competitiveness supports to Enterprise Ireland. They're also engaged in doing some of the customs and logistics training we're talking about there because they have said and it is something that may be smaller companies and I get it, would say we don't have the time to be doing this or we can't put the resources behind it. What they have said is that by utilising these supports they are putting themselves in a position to be able to be more competitive in any case, no matter what the outcome is. So I would contend that supports are there for smaller companies and the critical thing is that they are aware that they are there and that they would utilise them and see the value in utilising them. In terms of just the diversification piece and diversification should have happened and I know I had a response to this and diversification has happened but I may have to come back to it because there was if you'd like to know for a second Edward because I know I have something there on that. Numbers, very quickly on diversification when Ireland UK joined the EU on the EEC as it was then about 50% of Irish goods exports went to the UK. It's now 13 so it has diversified and it's actually diversifying rapidly. When I first started looking at this it was actually nearer 16 so it's actually even now the share going to the UK is declining all the time. The issue of the logistics side, Roslair and the motorway is an interesting one. The problem with the Roslair port and the direct route to France is that it is actually too long for most of the transport and there are individual break points. Once you go beyond a certain number of hours you just don't use that route if it's perishables for example going directly to France is too slow. What could easily happen if we have enough impediments to transport through the UK for the so-called land bridge that some of our exports to the rest of the EU will actually stop because you can't get them to market. If you're selling oysters from Carlingford for example they need to arrive on a shelf in France or in Germany or wherever with a shelf life and as you take a day off and the day only needs to be started as you take a day off you lose that shelf space. Just going to Roslair and going from there isn't going to be a solution to all the issues. There will be sectors and products that cannot go that way and so that means it's going to be very important to negotiate something for land bridge that we basically don't face any new impediments to our exports going through the UK and there are already existing arrangements there. There's an EU convention for example, a TIR convention 1976 which is in place and the UK is a signatory. So there are some things that can be done in this space and my criticism of the UK government is they didn't come up front with things that the low hanging fruit where they could simply say. We're going to solve that. That's not a worry. Maybe they will now but they changed that. Back to Rina briefly. I suppose one thing that always strikes me about this debate about market diversification and it should have happened more quickly and so on. When you look at any evidence and any economic evidence as to what countries should do or companies should do with their first exporting it's go to your nearest neighbour who has the same taste as you and speaks the same language as you and so on. So to be critical of Irish companies to have continued to export into the UK I think isn't fair to them frankly but there has been a lot of diversification and there has been such efforts made particularly in the last number of years faced now with this change that could not have been anticipated and should not have been anticipated to try and help companies in what will be a difficult challenge to diversify into new markets. I just wanted to make that point because I don't think Irish companies were exported to the UK out of laziness or anything like that. I don't know any economic reasons why that trade pattern would... And Edgar has written a lot on the gravity model which would show we should always be exporting and importing a lot from our nearest neighbour that goes I think without saying. It is a question though in terms of portfolio you want to be as diversified as possible particularly when your next door neighbour is having difficulties working out a coherent economic strategy for the future it's a wise place to be. Question over here. Hi Brian Barry from IFA so I have a question a comment before the question comes just on Joe's comment because we are conscious of and I know Joe has contributed to this significantly we are conscious of climate change is a very important issue there are important signals there that we read and that we are working on but the beef sector contributes a massive amount to this economy it doesn't make... accept it's not a very profitable enterprise for a lot of farmers fully accept that but it is extremely important in terms of the levels of economic activity especially around the regions and something that cannot be forgotten cannot ever be forgotten in this debate is if we reduce our production of beef it's not going to reduce the demand for beef they are not tied together the demand will simply be supplied from somewhere else and if it is supplied and this is where it's most likely to be supplied from South America from Brazil their carbon footprint per kilo of beef is between three and four times ours those are reasonable facts now we move on from that and I move to what the question was the question actually relates to and it's a comment and a question to Khan to regulatory alignment and I think I think the checker's statement and whatever should follow and an awful lot of what the British government has said has been shrouded in Spain but there's enough material in what they've said in the checker's statement on regulatory alignment to make it a significant move a very significant move not saying it's perfect but it is substantial now it's only on goods, it's not on services and okay there is a parliamentary lock thrown in there but this is an offer in negotiations so I just ask Khan what he thinks in that area because to be honest Khan's paper is an excellent paper of course and he has been highlighting these issues for months and putting them into the public domain and privately also and I want to recognize that the work that he's done but they are somewhere between option A and option B and we need to move them closer to option A obviously and that's where the customs area that we're not going to get into here we'll wait for the white paper on that comes in but I just wanted to ask Khan maybe just to comment on that I would think it's a substantial move we're not there yet on that area but it's a substantial move Khan Yes I tend to agree I think it's not often that your opponent which conceits something substantial like that not that early but everybody at the early stage in the negotiations there are two problems I see one is just that Disha, that Brian referred to the question of the British Parliament being here that are needing to copper fasten a river I mean what happens if they just scream with something that seems to fall apart very quickly the other issue I think is that I mean the minus any regulatory alignment is talking really about the non-terror side of the trade, the non-terror barriers I mean there's still no I'm not so happy to check the new paper yet I mean I think there's probably a lot less commitment from the UK on the terror side particularly what they say about collecting customs duties on behalf of the EU which I suppose the EU won't agree to anyway but again I think the state may well be the terror barriers but as Guy said at the beginning it is a significant step in progress and I think well to generalise for a minute I mean looking over the big picture I mean the UK won the money argument but more or less fairly quickly up front on transition which is a big issue the UK accepted the EU offered basically so it looks like taking a positive view of this thing that the UK will conceive more to get an agreement at least in certain circumstances I mean only time will tell could I just make one point though well I just have the floor there's something that's maybe a bit and hasn't been commented on so far and that is the risk of we not having it there not being a withdrawal agreement agreed by the end of this year well then most importantly the transition arrangements falls apart so where I mean if things go wrong we're actually definitely close to the cliff edge and I mean that's what I think we'll all be watching very closely in October and very shortly afterwards and there isn't much time after October Could I bounce that question a bit to Dahi just for comment on but also do you think there's some significance that services wasn't mentioned in the paper because I would have thought the UK has a big incentive to have an alignment on the services side particularly as far as financial services is concerned I mean the last thing they want is to be off a lot of things so I'm just wondering has that been kept for the white paper I don't know is the answer I think lots of people were surprised that it wasn't there I think you've got it I mean just look whilst we've been here Boris Johnson has gone she's in a very very difficult political position and I think to have got it as far as she got it in checkers it may have been just a bit too far at this time but there is a real possibility of a defect here Okay now I'm watching our time because we're due to finish up here in approximately 6 minutes Edgar do you have a 30 second point to make? Services, if you look at CETA the Canadian Europe agreement at the end of seven years seven products are subject to tariff quotas but a whole host of services don't trade freely and when you look at it even the Canadian provinces have exemptions on individual services and that's where the individual countries as Dahi mentioned earlier that's when they're going to come in That was a big break through the single market Dan, very quick question Thanks Dan O'Bron for the institute Dahi I suppose to you but anybody else the hard breaks to your people does their desire for a for a hard breaks is it greater than their fear of Corbyn so in other words what do you think will they bring the government down now I think now you have to think now that this is going to be forced to a vote she's going into the 1922 committee I think later today do they have the numbers they probably do at this stage I mean I said earlier on that I was very surprised that Boris Johnson didn't go first I was but there's obviously been a lot of pressure put on him and so I think the situation may have changed just in the last few hours there may be a leadership challenge So to answer your question is Brexit more important to them than Corbyn possibly I'm just going to draw this to a close because everybody's been incredibly patient this is the warmest afternoon to be in any space like this imaginable and people have been enormously patient and the gentlemen in the room on the panel have managed to keep their jackets on which I don't know how they did and they've done it and they're ties in three out of four cases but I think it's really been a fantastic opportunity to hear Gahi today talking about exactly where we are this story unfortunately will run and run and there will be different elements into it at different stages but it's fantastic to get an opportunity to hear the interpretation of that time and to be able to reflect on somebody who's been looking at the area for a very long time I think the three institute papers released have been hugely valuable they cover three very important areas not everybody wants to know about energy markets, electricity markets and the like I spent four years on the board of board gosh and around the time actually this was coming in and they were preparing for it so I've had my major dose of it over the years but it's not everybody's cup of tea we all can connect with retailing and distribution which I think is something that's very and of course we can all correct with agri food and then on top of that we're giving an indication of what the state can do I think the state now quite rightly recognises the amount it can do in these areas is quite marginal it can help and assist but ultimately it's about business it's about innovation, it's about people risk taking and just one point to say in the reverse of the sort of not so much the gravity model which tells you about where your trade would be but about entry into new markets I think that information technology and the web and all of that has made the possibility of entering new markets at greater distance become more possible so the idea of companies being born global now if they have the right support is there where historically everything you would always be told to sell in your next market so there's lots more to be said on this topic thank you all for coming this afternoon I think all of you got copies of the papers and I'd like to thank the panel members for their contribution