 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to this next session. Our last session dealt with the implications for UK business and this session will deal with the implications for Irish business. My name is Dahi O'Callig. I'm chair of the UK group in the Institute and it's a great pleasure for me to introduce the panel. I'll introduce them one by one. I'll ask them to say a few words one after the other and then I'll open up for questions with the audience. So our first panelist is John McGrain. John is the director general of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce. Before that he spent a lifetime working for Ulster Bank and for the Royal Bank of Scotland here in Ireland. I've known him for about five years. I've been impressed enormously with his capacity to get things done and his attention to detail and the number of positive ideas he comes up with to resolve our problems. But he's been extremely active in this debate in the Institute, in the British Irish Chamber of Commerce and particularly in the UK. So it's a great pleasure for me to ask John McGrain to say a few words. Thank you. Good to meet you Dahi. We're gonna need all the positive ideas we can get on this one, I can assure you. Thanks very much and congratulations to the Institute of International European Affairs and indeed to McCann Fitzgerald for hosting the discussion. It's extraordinarily important and I thought the quality and width and depth of the debate thus far this morning is a credit to everybody involved. And we have exactly five weeks as we know to get on with this. Just to make a plane where I come from, so I have the honor to run an organization that represents businesses that employ over two million people. They care greatly about the conduct of business between Britain and Ireland. That's all we talk about. It's trade, trade, trade between Britain and Ireland. We don't get involved in ideological debates or even in political debates, but we do care about the fact that the trade between the islands, you know most of this supports over 400,000 jobs. It's more than 1.2 billion a week. It's at the heart of our affairs. It's so taken for granted that we actually haven't thought at all about the real consequences of what would happen if we weren't in the EU. The EU is such a good idea. We'd have to make it if it didn't exist. We might make it a little bit differently. We'd probably run it a bit differently, but we've forgotten the point that the whole thing was about bringing together people in a common market where we could get stuff done without barriers and without stuff that made it harder for business to do what it does, which in turn creates trade. We say free trade grows trade. Growing trade grows incomes and well-being and security, not just for businesses, but for the people they employ, here, the UK and beyond, and well-being for our citizens the length and breadth of the country. So we're unashamedly about all of that. We are not in the alarmism business, but we are in the facts business, and this is extraordinarily serious for Ireland. As the government has said right back from 18 months ago, we don't tell people how to vote, but we absolutely register the fact that we have skin in the game and the connectedness that joined at the hipness economically of Ireland and the UK is beyond dispute, and it's particularly so for industries that matter a hell of a lot to us. Howard I'm sure will talk about big monolithic industries that exist because of the EU, actually, but even at local level, 16% of our FDIs exports go to the UK, but 44% of our indigenous firms, businesses, exports go to the UK. That's our mom and pop businesses. Indeed, indigenous business this year is now recruiting more staff than foreign direct investment business. So it's at the heart of what we are. It's not just a Dublin thing. It's the length and breadth of the country. It's tourism. It's local firms doing amazing things. It's a fella in Clare that I met the other day selling timber panels made in Clare, shipping them all the way across the country and across on a boat and into the middle of England to fit out the Northern powerhouse so-called. And he can do that at better value and faster than anybody else can supply into that trade. It's the reason why if you're in and out of London as I am half the week every week and you're stuck at Tottenham Court Road and you're wondering what's going on underground where the Crossrail Tube is being built, it's lined with 32,000 concrete panels, all of which are made in Mullingar. And what kind of a country are we that we can be so brilliant and we can do that stuff and employ loads of people from Ireland and Poland and other good places and indeed from the UK making stuff that we can ship across the sea against the world's best competitors and do all that. So we care about this. We care about the fact that as Blair Horan has said earlier on in a fantastic paper that he's about to put up on the Institute's website, we've forgotten about the fact that free trade here really does mean free trade. Norway doesn't have free trade. Canada won't have free trade. It won't apply to financial services in Canada. It doesn't apply to food in Norway. It's a agreed trade regime which involves allowing free movement of people, paying on the way in, complying with all the laws. You know all this stuff but it's not free trade. We have free trade with the UK. If we didn't have free trade with the UK most of the commentators who stumbled across different alternative models in the last month have finally landed on it. It's the World Trade Organization, it's WTO. And as Blair has said, if it's beef, that's an import quota or levy of more than 70%. If it's dairy, it's over 30%. Even down to vegetables and fruit, it's 15%. We've forgotten what that feels like. I grew up in Drahada where people spent a long number of years not selling anything to the UK. And then under the Anglo Irish Free Trade Agreement, God bless us, we had so-called free trade but it was controlled free trade. We ended up being allowed to sell certain products at certain tariffs in controlled ways that basically ended up giving us a very bad deal which took us another 50 years to learn how to make our own stuff that would sell on global markets against global competition without barriers and we competed on our own merits. That's actually what's at issue over the next short while and as I pass it on maybe before the debate what I would say is, fellas like Owen Brennan talked about it earlier on, the issue is not just to talk to us about us and with us, it's about saying this is really important and to do positive things. So what we're saying for our members, well, we'll do two practical things over the next short while. We will stop talking about the numbers and the maths that we know now but we will talk about some of the myths that talk about saying that there'd be no border with Northern Ireland. I'm afraid you can't leave something because you're worried about the border and then leave the border open. It's illogical to think that there won't be controls between North and South and indeed under WTO, as Blair's paper points out, the South will need controls on the potential supply into Ireland of low cost product that Britain might need to source from elsewhere under its agreements however long it takes them to crafts. So it gets very messy. What we will talk about for the next few weeks is helping employers to help their employees understand in rather simpler terms what the nuggets of information are about this and to run legitimate conversations not telling people what to do. And then the second thing we'll do is this and I would urge you to do the same. It's been touched on earlier on. Turnout will define the outcome on this referendum. The people who want to leave will all vote. The people who want to remain may not and that's not just young people at Glastonbury it includes a lot of soft, lazy remains the length and breadth of the United Kingdom North, South, East and West. Phone a friend, phone your granny like the marriage equality program, phone your supplier, phone your customers and phone your circle of influence and say whatever way you feel about this the most important thing is to cast a vote on the 23rd of June and we'll take our chances on that. Thank you very much John. And now call on Howard Miller. Howard is the chairman of BDO which is a tax advisory services but before that he was involved for a very long time with Ryanair, first as chief financial officer and secondly as deputy chief executive. So it's a great pleasure Howard. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well unfortunately John McGrane went before me and he's an impossible act to follow cause he could speak off the cuff for about five hours or even looking at his notes once but as you can see he's a wonderful speaker. I'm gonna be a bit more formal. I've kind of prepared some notes. I didn't do this for my leaving search but I'm doing it today. But I kind of want to set more of a bit of a background. Many of you will recall that that brilliant program on the BBC, yes minister and the mumblings and bumblings of the minister hacker. And when I was thinking about this I said I should have a look back at this. So I had a look back and I had him on CD or DVD and I went back to minister hacker's description of an EU civil servant and I'm quoting what he said. You know what they say about the average common market official a long time ago? He has the organizing ability of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans and the modesty of the French. And that's topped up by the imagination of the Belgians, the generosity of the Dutch and the intelligence of the Irish. That's what he said. Not great for the Irish but of course he forgot to mention he forgot to mention about the British official about he brought probably tea and crumpets or something like that. But anyway, just leaving aside the minister hacker and his comments, Britain has always, if you go back to Winston Churchill there is that spirit of, we talked about the finest hour. You know, the island nation standing alone against her Hitler. But I think there is a fundamental difference. The UK has been a very reluctant member of the EU like somebody dragged along to a party or perhaps to a Brexit conference today when they'd far out to be down the cake of watching Morori McElroy. The Eurosceptics have always used the island nation vision to justify an EU exit. And you know, they have a litany of complaints. It costs too much. It's leading to too much immigration. There's too much regulation. And Britain doesn't have enough influence to be better off on its own. I won't bore you with the kind of the numbers but the numbers involved for the UK are staggering. 51% of its exports are with EU members. On the other side, only 6% of EU exports are to Britain. The UK is far more dependent on the EU than it is on its inbound trade. When Britain joined the European Union only 10% of the UK exports were EU members in 1973 and that's risen to 50%. They've been a massive beneficiary over that period. And I think when they, and I personally believe they will exit, every taxi driver of Aston London tells me that. So that's normally a very good straw poll. I think when they will exit, I think they're gonna have a very difficult situation. And the reality is that the French and Germans are gonna inflict a lot of pain on them. And if they think they're gonna get what Norway and Switzerland have, the Swiss have something like 50 major trade agreements and 100 minor bilateral agreements on trade. Now, if you think how long that would take to negotiate with the French and Germans, it would just be extraordinary. So I think what's gonna happen is they're gonna be taught a very bad and tough lesson that leaving the European Union will be very bad. I think they will also, the French and the Germans will want to police all the other members of the European Union who are also thinking about exits and I'm thinking of the Czechs and others here who don't really want to be in the European Union. And I think they're gonna make a bloody fine example of the UK and make it extremely difficult for them. I also believe that there will be an attack on the city of London, which is the powerhouse of the London economy, which is most of the UK. And I think the Germans are only too delighted to impose some kind of a transaction tax or banking tax, which I think I'll have a very negative effect on London. I think it's a very big mistake for the UK. I think they're very badly led. I think the buffoon who I described as Boris Johnson, who claims to be the Donald Trump of the UK is leading them down a very bad path. Well, he does have the same hairstyle. So I think it's not a bad comparison. And I think ultimately it'll be very, very difficult. On influence, I think the old phrase applies, and excuse my French here, it's better to be inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. And I think that's really the big problem for the UK. They are going to lose their influence. They'll be very much marginalised. And I think it's a very, very bad decision for the UK and also for Europe. What I also think will happen for Ireland is that I think it's going to be very negative. I think the negotiation of the trade agreements will take a long time. We're obviously partied up because we're a member of the European Union. I think the outlook on the economy will be poor. There's possibly a mini recession coming. There'll be a loss of exports. I think we will lose markets to the UK. And I think it will be difficult to replace them. And the example I give here is that, you know, obviously New Zealand is very, very close to the UK. And they're just going to, if there's any problem with Irish butter, just going to replace it with New Zealand butter. If it's beef, it'll be Brazil. So I think if they get an inside track in that market, when we come back and try and restore a presence there, I think we'll lose some ground. So that's the kind of bad news. What's the upside? Well, I think if the treaties are being negotiated, we have such close ties with Britain as John explained about the guys doing the panels from Claire, which is a fantastic story. I think a lot of the ground will be made up, although I don't believe all of it will be made up. What I think is the real opportunity of Britain Exits is that on foreign direct investment, we are the only other natural English-speaking country in Europe. And I think foreign direct investment won't go to the UK because it won't have that access to the European Union. So I think we will be a net beneficiary of foreign direct investment that would be normally directed to the UK. I actually think there will be a flight from the UK. I can certainly think if there's a banking or transaction tax placed on London, we could be a net beneficiary of that as well. And I think we'll get the more mobile UK companies may want to relocate to Ireland. So overall, my view is that it would appear that the negatives would initially appear to outweigh the positives. But once the trade agreements are regularised, I think there will be a lot of improvement. I think for Ireland, it may actually force us into markets. We have become hugely dependent on the UK as one of our export markets. I think it will actually force us to look further afield, which may not be a bad thing in the long run. And I think there's very considerable upside in terms of foreign direct investment and financial services. So my parting comment to you, in summary, Brexit coming, put on your tin hats. Thank you very much, Howard. Given your description of modern-day British politicians, perhaps we should ask Mr. Hacker to come back. I now ask Brendan McGrath to say a few words. Brendan is the group CEO of Gay Electric Holdings, which is an independent renewable energy company. Brendan. I'm minded of the comment by J.K. Gail Brace, when he said the only function of economic forecasting was to make astrology look respectable. And I'm wondering, where does that leave in terms of political forecasting? I'm going to give you an insight, I'll try and give you an insight today in terms of the energy market, particularly the renewable energy market, because it does have quite a significant founding in terms of European regulation and in terms of cross-border trade. As a company, Gay Electric found out 12 years ago we're an international operation in so far as we do business on the island of Ireland, north and south, in the UK, on the continent, and in the US. We have 94 professionals working across that stream and we're involved in four different platforms of onshore and offshore wind, energy storage, bioenergy and solar development, solar PV. And effectively we do most of that in-house and that's a differentiator we have in comparison to some of our other competitors. If I look at the wind energy platform that we have on the island of Ireland, it's actually equally spread between the north and south. So we're the largest independent developer on the island, we're 15% share of the renewable energy market. We have 400 megawatts of projects, 363 of those spinning. On the offshore side, we have a position in the RSC and while I won't go into it in detail, I do see offshore wind as being a huge potential for this country going forward in terms of supply into the UK. We have been unique in the renewable energy business in taking a very early position in relation to energy storage. We have a very large energy storage project in Larn County Antrim, which is basically compressing air into underground caverns and releasing air to drive turbines at a later stage. This project is a PCI project, which is a project of common interest in Europe and has received significant backing from the European Union to date. We also have a an MOU with Tesla, who are one of the world's leading battery development companies and we are bringing battery storage to this country with a project in Leish beginning this year. On the solar platform, we have, like a lot of others, developed a pipeline that awaits a government support system to put solar into the mix on the island. And we have a similar solar platform in the north of Ireland. Bioenergy is an area that Ireland has lagged behind on over the last number of years. We bought a bioenergy company two or three years back to create a platform that company has existing long-term contracts in Monaghan, Yalltown Council. They also have a client that includes stall earn and we are placed with that business to expand again as the bioenergy market begins to open up. So in terms of the rest of the discussion, in terms of an Irish company working on the island and dealing with the north of Ireland, particularly, I just want to give you some insights in terms of how I see Brexit affecting it. The EU framework was an essential condition for both states, Britain and Ireland, in terms of managing the violence in Northern Ireland from 1970 to 1998. As has already been mentioned, the Irish border is the only land border with the UK and the single electricity market known as the SEM is unique in so far as it was a direct result of the Good Friday Agreement. So what is the SEM? It was set up in November 2004 by the respective governments. The primary objective of the SEM is to develop wholesale electricity arrangements that deliver an efficient level of sustainable price to all customers for a supply that is reliable and secure in both the short and long term on an all island basis. So the objectives are to secure security of supply, promoting competition, minimizing transition costs, fostering renewable energy and enabling demand side management. And this basically comes directly from the Good Friday Agreement in terms of the setup of an all island market for energy. If I look at renewable energy development in the North, what is unique about it in terms of being involved in that area is that renewable energy developers only exist with social license to operate from communities. If they don't get a support from a local community, then they can't operate because they won't be able to build. So that involvement means involvement with landowners, an involvement with local communities, an involvement with local council officials, an involvement with local councillors, an involvement with planners, an involvement with department officials, and an involvement with government ministers. And each dot up there represents a wind farm that we have built or learn our case plan that we hope to build. So that is meant that we have had to involve ourselves in that discussion probably over as long as seven years in order to build the project. And I often remind our staff that I see our involvement as being the foot soldiers for the peace process because we normalize by doing business and doing business with people and communities. If I then go on and take a look at what the EU does in terms of forming policy in relation to an energy union, in which the GB has been broadly supportive and in fact in some areas has led the way. So the five pillars include promoting energy security, trying to arrive at a connected Europe through initially a regional approach, creating regional markets and then supporting those markets through what is called projects of common interest. So picking out projects that can make a contribution to the whole European market. And in our case, our case project or compressed air energy storage project is one of those projects. Demand moderation is also a key pillar of the European union. Decarbonizing the energy mix is a major push from Europe. Emissions trading, where in fact the UK has led the way and has only now been followed by the likes of France and Germany. And again, research and innovation and green growth again has come as a pillar of the EU and in fact, UK has been one of the main beneficiaries of that research coming from the UK. So if they do exit, what happens? The UK has been a strong advocate of liberalized power markets across the UK. The view is not expected to change, but the impact on Ireland could be a disconnect of policy and market rules in the future, leaving Ireland only connected to a market with a different policy and different to the rules of the EU. So that's a threat from Ireland's point of view. But there are models across Europe where the EU has involved in regional markets with the likes of Switzerland, Norway and Baltic area. And there are plans to build further interconnectors into France. So that may alleviate that if it does become a problem in the future. So again, the EU, it's not compulsory to be a member of the EU in order to take part in its admission trading scheme. The threat might be that the UK could drop some specific European measures, although given that they have led a lot of them, it's unlikely that that may happen. So again, following the exit, the EU could suffer billions of pounds in renewable energy projects if it was to ditch its stake in the European Investment Bank. Today, they are one of the biggest beneficiaries, taking 24% of the 7.2 billion that's available through the Climate Awareness Fund. The EU could be released from its renewable targets, although again, it has led those in Europe, so it is possible but unlikely. Again, gas from Ireland's point of view comes through the UK, so if there was tariff put on gas into the UK, then it has to travel across the UK and into us and how we would disentangle that. So to finish up on a lighter note, it has been said that the sun never set on the British Empire and the Irish explanation for that was that's because God would not trust the Brits in the dark. So they have been in the dark with the rest of us, probably since Suez in the 50s, so can they be trusted to make the right decision? In the 70s, they were asked the same question and the vote was 70-30. I believe it would not be that different this time around. Thank you. Thank you, Brendan. Thank you, Brendan. Our next speaker is Susan Dargan. Susan is the chair of the Financial Services Ireland, which is the body which unites us at where all of the companies here in Ireland in financial services. She's an executive vice president and head of State Street Global Services overseas, which essentially is in Ireland and Luxembourg. Susan, you're very good. Thank you, Dargan. So good morning, everybody. Good afternoon at this stage. So FSI has been keeping a very close eye on the debate around Brexit, and we first held a referendum, first held a seminar on it just after the referendum. It's obviously going to have a very significant impact if it does come to play on our members and just looking at some of the stats around financial services. The financial services employs over a million people in the UK at the moment. Overseas-owned companies represent 46% of all financial services group worth in excess of 100 million sterling in the UK. And here in Ireland, in international financial services, we currently employ 38,000 people. That's targeted to grow to 45,000 by 2020 without a Brexit. The city of London is one of the most value added components of the British economy, and we've talked about that a lot this morning. Ireland's financial services has benefited greatly from our links with the city of London, and an Ibeck recent paper on Brexit showed that Ireland exports five billion of financial and insurance services to the UK annually. So that billion plus per week includes five billion of financial services. When we look at, you know, that there's going to be major impacts for our financial services in Europe and in Ireland if there is a Brexit. Areas that we look at are regulation, which we've talked about. You know, under Brexit, the British economy will remain significant, but will not be as dominant in Europe as it has been in the past. We appreciate the value of Britain's voice at the table in terms of reform and regulation. And without it, we fear that there will, it will be a challenge to push the growth and jobs agenda, job creation agenda within the EU. The British pragmatic view on that reform and regulation has been seen in areas like Lords Hills, Lords Hills Capital Markets Union more recently, which is focused on that growth agenda. And also financial services Ireland is working in dialogue with the city of London at the moment to try to bring forward an agenda of pragmatic and growth friendly financial services regulation into the future. So all of those will create impacts with the Brexit. Market impact, everybody knows, it's going to be significant. We don't, State Street has recently done a review of the potential market impact. We don't think that Brexit has been priced into the market at this stage. Howard may disagree with me on this one, but what we've seen in terms of investor behavior at the moment, there is a stronger than usual international investor flows into UK equities and bonds. And that might be, the last panel spoke about the fact that footsie companies do not rely fully on the UK market itself. But we've also seen that hedging, currency hedging is at over 50%. And that's the first time that we've seen that since we started to monitor this in 1999. So it gives you a picture of where people think that the markets might go. And that's not to forget the potential impact on an all Ireland economy and the impact for Ireland in terms of the volatility in exchange rates. We've mentioned the foreign direct investment. And if we look at just a couple of areas where Britain's financial services sector could be impacted, Britain's payments companies may no longer be guaranteed access to EU payments markets. And they won't benefit from the coming into effect of the payment services directive, Mark II. So PSD II, which is imminent. Insurance companies may no longer automatically receive passporting rights into EU markets. And likewise, the USITs, which are UK USITs, which funds which currently can be set up in one European market and then distributed globally may not be able to avail of that passporting. This might present opportunities and is likely to present opportunities for Ireland. And we've talked about this already. So in Ireland, the payments industry ranks high on the list of Ireland's global financial services success stories. International insurance companies carry out a wide range of regulated and non-regulated activities out of Ireland for international markets. And we currently employ 27,000 people in that area with over 200 billion in assets under management. And the Irish fund industry administers 3.8 trillion of assets for over 450 investment managers distributing to over 70 countries. Now, all of that could play to the benefit of Ireland, but that is only a microcosm in terms of the benefits of that increased FDI, where British based institutions could look to relocate their headquarters, et cetera. The benefit of that from an Irish perspective is far, far outweighed by the market uncertainty, the impact to trade, the impact to free movement of goods and free movement of people. So while we do see that there may be benefits, they are significantly outweighed by the disadvantages of a Brexit. So from that perspective, you can see where financial services are coming out. And I suppose what I'm really interested in is to hear people's views from the floor as well, because I think we really need to hear everybody's voice. I think it's a collective view that we need in terms of how to get through the next few weeks in order to try to get the right result, both from a European perspective and Irish perspective and a UK perspective. Thank you, Susan.