 Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming. My name is Dahio Kallig. I'm the chair of the UK group in the Institute for International European Affairs. And personally, I've had some connection with the UK. I spent 11 years in the Irish Embassy in London. Six of them as ambassador. So I'm reasonably familiar with government and administration in London. At least I hope I am. Thank you all for coming. The format is, I'll say a few words, followed by my four colleagues who will say a few words each. And then we're open for question and answer and discussion. And everything is on the record. There's nothing off the record. And the purpose of coming here is just to launch this report from the Institute. It breaks a status report. I hope you all have a copy. It's really designed to provide information about how the negotiations might be conducted. It's intended to be a reference guide. And it doesn't take any sides on any of the issues. It's just intended to be something that's usable, something that's readable for people who are interested in the coming negotiations. There are 11 chapters which are divided into five sections. The first pretty much sets the scene, the context. Brendan Halligan has written that first chapter and he'll talk about that in a few moments. Tony Brown has dealt with the, what's happened since the referendum up until now. And believe it or not, he even has a paragraph on the May speech which happened yesterday. The second deals with preparations within the EU. And the one chapter has been written by the Brussels branch of the IIEA. And the other by Catherine Day, who's probably the most distinguished Irish person to work as an international civil servant. And it's a great pleasure, Catherine, that you're here. And then there is a chapter on the UK written by Paul Gillespie, the first one and the second one by John Palmer. Paul concentrating really on the issues from a London point of view and John somewhat on the issues from a Brussels point of view. And finally, the last two sections, section D are the implications for Ireland and the last section are the implications for business. Now I think it's beyond doubt that Brexit is one of the greatest challenges that has faced this state. And it's going to require enormous effort on the part of the Irish government and of Irish business to ensure that our interests are protected. And to ensure that we come out of this negotiations, which could last for a very long time, that we come out of them as vibrant and as good an economy then as we have now. There are, I think, three particular areas that are important. Well, there are more than three, but there are three in particular. There's our trade with the UK, which is important for our smaller companies in particular, and very important for agriculture and for our agribusiness. It's the common travel area, but the one for me, I think, which is really the most important is Northern Ireland. And it's the one about which I personally am most concerned because the difficulties in Northern Ireland, and we've seen them to the fore in the last few weeks, those difficulties were solved over a very long period, more than 30 years, by two governments in London and Dublin, by politicians in London and in Dublin, and by civil servants in London and in Dublin who had, within the European Union, learned to work together and to resolve differences together. And what really worries me is that over the coming years, that that very close relationship between London and Dublin, that that will, to some extent, atrophy because of the fact that we will be in one camp and they will be outside. Now, I said that there are no opinions expressed in the status report, but you might forgive me or bear with me if I give you a few opinions myself. Nothing to do with the report. The first is, really, it is good that we've had the May speech yesterday. We now know what the British want, and I think it is better that we know what they want. But frankly, there was nothing particularly new in the speech. Those of you who have read the book that we published two years ago, where we argued for a bespoke arrangement for the UK, we argued for that bespoke arrangement within the European Union. They, unfortunately, took a decision to have a bespoke arrangement outside the European Union. But there's nothing particularly new in the issues. What I think is good about yesterday is, firstly, that there's been clarity that they've said they're going to leave the single market. They have effectively said they're going to leave the customs union. They're going to introduce regulations for immigration, and they're going to distance themselves from the European Court of Justice. Where is it all going to end up? We certainly don't know when, but I think we're likely to end up with a free trade agreement or a series of free trade agreements dealing with different sectors. How difficult they will be to negotiate, I don't know, but I think that's where we're likely to be. And they'll be supplemented likely by various other agreements to cover things like foreign affairs, maybe defence, and so on. So there'll be a series of agreements. And Mrs May made clear yesterday that she doesn't want an instant break. She wants things to change smoothly, and that should be helpful for Irish business. It should be helpful for those trying to sell into the British market and trying to compete with the British. So that's on the positive side. On the negative side, I have to say I didn't like at all the threats that were contained in the speech. This negotiation will be successful to the extent that both sides are helpful to one another. And I don't think threats are ever helpful. But at least we know where it's likely to end up. There has been a lot of talk and a lot of worry in this country about the future. I'd like to end on a positive note. I'm old enough to remember what this country was like 40, 50 years ago. It was very poor. There was very little opportunity for people in this country. This country has changed profoundly and changed profoundly for the better. It's probably been the most successful country economically in the European Union over the last 40 years, in spite of the difficulties, and particularly in spite of the recession 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago. It's been a very successful country. I see no reason whatsoever why this country cannot be equally successful in the future as we go into Brexit. And I think it behoves all of us here to support the government in its attempts to ensure the best outcome for this country. That's not in the report. So I now invite, if I may, Brendan Halligan. Good afternoon and thank you for opening this presentation. And thank you all for coming indeed to the launch of the status report. I think you can take that as Ireland's leading think tank that the Institute has been looking at this issue for quite some time, in fact over 25 years. And we've now come to this seminar here today. We have published three books, as Dahi has said, over those 25 years. Numerous reports. And we currently have on our website, which I invite you all to look at, if you haven't seen it already, a Brexit brief, which is giving you a reportage, listing what's happening and giving you links to all the various documentation. And we've just begun to publish what we call Brexit Intelligence, which is an analysis of what's happening for the busy executive and or civil servant. And now this status report. The instructions, as Dahi said, in regards to the status report, were simple. You write no more than 1500 words to keep at the facts and you will skew personal opinion. And now we have Mrs May. So the first thing I want to do is thank her for having timed our speech for yesterday. It was most convenient and we're very grateful to her. But the first point to make, I think, in response to it, as Dahi has said, is that there's nothing new in the speech and this was to be expected. What we have looked at, what we have seen, our conclusions have been over 25 years that ultimately politics was going to dominate economics. This is as a result of a movement in terms of English nationalism. So immigration controls have been given primacy over all other considerations, along with ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and with a desire to keep transferring, making a financial contribution. So those three priorities added together, the logic of it is that you sacrifice membership of the single market and indeed of the customs union and you reimpose customs and passport controls and, as she said yesterday, you conclude something like a free trade agreement with the European Union as a third country. Because the point is now that all the rights and obligations that arise from being a signature to treaties will end on a particular day and at that point Britain becomes a third country. So to use an expression that she used herself yesterday, I think to put everything in perspective, they're fully out. There's no half in and half out. What we don't know, Dahi has already alluded to and I think it's very important to us today in the status report to assess what it is we don't know. As he has said, we don't know what the contents of the free trade agreement is going to be like. We don't know the form of it either and we don't know equally important for us on this island as to how the common travel area is going to be maintained, despite the good intentions of both governments. I think however one of the most important things that we don't know is the relationship between article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union and article 218 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. We don't know whether or not these are going to run in parallel or run in sequence. Mrs May is certainly of the view that they will run in parallel. She refers to the fact that article 50 makes reference to the new arrangement between the outgoing member state and the European Union. And she says you can't make reference to something that doesn't exist. On the other hand, article 218 is very clear that it's designed to handle the processes for concluding a trade agreement between a third country and the European Union. In other words, you can't really get into it until such time as Brits have actually left the European Union. There's a dilemma here, there's a catch 22 and how it's going to be solved, I'm not quite sure. That means that following the day in which British membership ends of the European Union, there could be two transition periods, not just one as has been talked about. There could be a period to do with the running down of the Aki communitaire on the one hand and running in the new arrangement on the other. But there could also be a period simply to get to the new arrangement. Now all of that has got profound implications for business because it could elongate the whole period of getting to a stage where we actually know what's happening. The other thing that she did not mention yesterday, which I think adds to the uncertainty about timing, is that there's going to be a bill to be paid by the United Kingdom for disengaging itself from the European Union. As you know, the figures being brooded about at the moment in Brussels particularly vary between 40 and 60 billion, with a lot of emphasis on the upper end of that spectrum, 60 billion. Also, the intelligence would indicate that, from the point of view of the Union, that this is to be the first issue to be sorted out before anything else is agreed. So you can imagine that that can take quite some time and it leads into a very limited timetable anyway. You all would have seen what Barnier said about the division of the two years, really leaving herself with just a little over a year's actual negotiating time. So we don't know what's going to come first here and we don't... The real problem is I think that the debate about the bill could delay the timetable and if it does delay the timetable beyond two years, you're into really serious political water here because you have European elections just shortly after the expiry of the two years. The incoming European Parliament will need at least four to five months to get up and running and all that's wasted time if you want. And of course at the very end of this it's got to give its assent to the whole deal. But where that extra time to spill over for 12 months or more, you're now into the British general election in 2020. So all of this could be quite problematic to say the least with and we're not talking about what else might happen in other countries such as France and in Germany. The next phase of this study of ours will be on what we call at the beginning when we're setting the scene is an asymmetric shock because our belief is that Ireland will be obviously more disproportionately affected than any other country both politically and economically. Politically we don't have to explain why because of Northern Ireland but economically as Dahi has mentioned about trade there's also the things such as free movement. But for me which I mentioned in my opening chapter it has always been a fear of mine from the very beginning and that is to say the disadvantageous movements in the exchange rate between the euro and sterling. So devaluation I think is the greatest threat to our continuing competitiveness. As we've seen the pound is depreciated by approximately 20% since the decision and what I would now think drawing on historical analogy is that we need something like we had in 1979 when we joined the European Monetary System. We did so obviously everybody knew what the risks were at that time and both France and Germany went out of their way to facilitate us by giving us very major loans at the time at very reasonable rates and later on of course we had the cohesion funds. I think that something along those lines are needed now and I was interested to see that this point came up yesterday in the oil. So that's the challenge ahead as to how we're going to get through this period which is an adjustment which in my view will take the economy at least 10 years. So to summarize what Dahi has said the three issues were trade, free movement and Northern Ireland and the which I've added as the asymmetric shock. Thank you. So good afternoon everybody. I'm going to go a little bit deeper into some of the nitty-gritty of how will the negotiations actually happen. It's new territory because Article 50 exists for the first time in the Treaty of Lisbon so it's untested but it's a relatively short and relatively clear article it's triggered by the member state that wants to leave and there's a two-year time period for the exit to be negotiated. It can be extended by unanimity but I don't think that's likely to happen. Now as we saw in Prime Minister May's speech yesterday actually the more interesting and more difficult thing to negotiate will be the separate negotiation on the future relationship between the EU and the United Kingdom and in practice both are linked because we will have to have answers to a lot of questions written into the Article 50 agreement before we can conclude it and that will then shape quite a lot of the negotiations on the future relationship as I'm going to talk a little bit about in a moment. I think everybody agrees that yesterday's speech did clarify a number of issues and they will certainly help with the Article 50 negotiations. Prime Minister May's speech was clear that the UK wants to be out of the single market out of the common commercial policy and out of the common external tariff and note I don't say out of the customs union because I think parts of the speech don't quite say that. I think the speech was clear at a high level of generality but of course it was of necessity perhaps lacking in detail and it was an opening bid. I think she was setting out basically something close to well we'd like a good deal with very little obligations and how else would you start such a negotiation? So a lot more detail has to come. The successor negotiations of what kind of relationship the EU wants to have with the UK and the UK wants to have with the EU will of necessity take a long time. It's not only because there are 28 countries involved it's also because unraveling a relationship that has been built up over 40 years is intrinsically difficult and given the level of ambition set out by Prime Minister May yesterday it is likely to be what the EU calls a mixed agreement requiring agreement of all Member States and all Parliaments and as we saw with the recent travails of getting the Canada Agreement across the line even the Walloon Parliament and lots of other Parliaments will have their say so of necessity it's going to be a long drawn out experience. And I was glad to see in the speech yesterday the recognition of the need for transitional arrangements because that is very, very clearly going to be necessary. The successor agreement cannot be in place on the first day after the UK officially leaves the EU. The speech also implied a desire to have different transition periods and we'll have to see what the other 27 Member States make of that. Now in procedural terms the negotiations are going to be conducted by the Commission that's the norm in trade negotiations it's also interestingly the norm in accession negotiations so here we have the opposite of an accession negotiation but of course every Member State will follow very, very closely so there will be very, very regular debriefings President Tusk's staff will be represented in the Commission negotiating team as will the rotating presidency and Corriper, the General Affairs Council will have a key role in preparing the European Councils which I expect to discuss this issue at every single meeting they will have for several years to come. What kind of successor agreement could there be? First of all it's clearer and it's more clear since yesterday that it will be tailor made, it will be sewer generous but of course we already have a lot of examples to draw on and over many years the EU has concluded free trade agreements with lots of third countries and over the years these agreements have gone well beyond just trade in goods so they now include a whole lot of other things from obviously trade in services but also some have justice and home affairs cooperation in them, some have cultural cooperation in them so there are examples to draw on and each one is tailor made in the end of the day. An issue that I think will start to become clear is the extent to which the EUK will still be bound by EU rules and regulations after it leaves and I think this is beginning to dawn on parts of the UK business because in order to sell to the European Union European Union rules will apply and just like Norway I think there will be a frustration in the British civil service and in the British business community that they will not have an influence over shaping future EU policy but they will of course be bound directly by it but you can't have your UK can eat it and that's one consequence of leaving the EU it's also clear, I mean it's very clear that the two things the UK wants to escape from is freedom of movement and the control of the European Court of Justice but for any free trade agreement to work there has to be a dispute settlement mechanism what happens when all the good intentions fail to materialize and there's a breach or a perceived breach of an agreement so there will have to be still some sort of supranational way of sorting out disputes in the regulations to come and that will also be part of putting a final agreement together. I think there is a lot of discussion about how will these two discussions run in parallel it's clear legally that the EU can't conclude a free trade or any other kind of agreement with the UK until it becomes a third country but that doesn't mean that a lot can't be worked out in advance and I think in practice discussions will run in parallel they will not be concluded but they will have to run in parallel because to a certain extent anyway what will be written into the article 50 agreement will then be taken up in the successor agreement I think the commission has maybe been misunderstood on that I don't think the commission has ever said and certainly doesn't intend that we will have no discussion with the UK before it actually leaves the union on what the successor relationship will be that would not make sense that would lead to even more disruption than we're likely to face at the moment but of course both legally but also technically it won't be possible to neatly conclude the two sets of negotiations in two years and then have one smoothly take over from the other simply because of the amount of time the amount of people involved and the amount of detail that will have to be sorted out I don't believe either that the EU will be vengeful or punitive in these negotiations I think everybody will approach the negotiations with a very hard headed sense of what is their own self-interest and it would be naive to believe it would be anything other than that I think that the special case of Ireland and Northern Ireland has been very well accepted by the Brussels institutions and by the other 27 member states but the details have to be worked out and while I think the special case on the common travel area has been accepted we don't have a special case on the economic or trade matters, there every country in the EU is competing with every other country so those will be tough, tough negotiations I think that, and this is an important point that I think hasn't received enough coverage yet Brexit will also mean inevitably that the EU will now reshape itself the loss of the UK budget contribution is clearly one of the early triggers taking away 17-18% of the EU budget doesn't mean that, it's business as usual and that's going to be an early sign of the change but more importantly I think politically in terms of EU future integration we are going to have to have a debate here about what is our view on how differently the EU will look in 10-20 years time from what we would have thought about before the 23rd of June last year I think that it will inevitably be more continental and that may not always be to our taste so I think there is going to be an ongoing need for Ireland to network much more intensively with other small like-minded member states to make sure that we are very active and have our say and advocate our views in terms of where the EU is going to go next and for me that will also mean the need for much more public engagement here and much more debate in Ireland about what it is we get out of the EU he said very passionately and I couldn't agree more that Ireland has been perhaps a major beneficiary of EU membership but we will have to go back and rethink now and think differently about what do we want from the next generation of EU membership I want to just finish with a couple of comments on what are the issues for the EU and what will the other 27 be thinking about I think the phrase cherry picking has already been done to death in the last 24 hours but that will be one of the things that the EU will try to avoid and reading the speech I thought it's no accident that Prime Minister May has mentioned cars and financial services those are key sectors for the British economy but they're also key sectors for other member states economies so the idea that you can have the deal you want on the sectors that are important to you and you don't have to take account of anybody else's wishes is simply not a realistic negotiating target it may be a good opening bid but it's not a realistic negotiating position I think a lot of work is being done and will have to be done on what kind of customs cooperation do we want to have as I said already to sell into European market into EU markets EU rules apply and there will be a big issue for checking rules of origin if the UK is not going to be bound by the common external tariff and as we know the modern world is not like the old fashioned one where goods were put on a ship and they arrived in a port now we have multiple entry exits of intermediate stages in producing goods not to mention all the complexity of the modern services sector so we will have to see what kind of checks will be put in place to allow the kind of degree of customs cooperation that Mrs May set out in her speech yesterday the finance issue not only the loss of the UK contribution to the EU budget but also what will the UK have to pay for access to the European market in the future other countries that have access to the single market pay into the EU budget at the moment that money only goes to the new member states so there are many many questions that will have to be worked through in the future and the other member states will be looking very carefully at what kind of special deals are done because they will want to avoid contamination and I think it was no accident that the Taoiseach was very recently in Madrid talking to the Spanish authorities who will keep a very close eye on what kind of special arrangements are made between Ireland, the UK and Northern Ireland there is also the question of what happens to EU citizens in the UK and British citizens living in the rest of the EU and while probably many member states would like to do a deal quickly on that, my feeling is that everything will remain to be agreed at the end because everything is now a bargaining chip and I doubt if many member states would be willing to sign up to something partial until they see the full shape of the whole deal so that will be important and finally the transition arrangements and what rules apply during them so probably to all intents and purposes the day after the UK leaves will feel very much like the day before they left because it is going to take time to work out the transitional arrangements to put alternative arrangements in place like it or not this is going to take quite a long time and I think if and we will come to an ad in very tense moments in the negotiations but the option of simply saying ok we've had enough and there's no deal possible therefore we walk away from it because to not have an agreement in place with the EU means falling back on WTO rules but they also take time to negotiate and with far more members than the 27 of the EU so I think we're in for a lot of mind numbing tedious technical negotiations that will float up to the political level every so often and then go down again into the committee rooms in Brussels I think there will be the will to succeed because this is very important for all kinds of reasons but I think it will be a hard headed negotiation and we need to be prepared for that thank you I want to start though with a bit of a political point not a party political point but a political point and that is that it remains at the level of very much a draft political project that is to say as has been typical frankly of successive leaders of the Conservative Party in recent years it's drawn up with two audiences in mind internal audiences in mind obviously following the referendum the very narrow but nonetheless clear referendum decision the Eurosceptic wing of not only the Conservative Party but of its electoral the wider electorate secondly there remains in the Conservative Party certainly in the parliamentary Conservative Party actually a majority of MPs who are as yet far from convinced about the risks and the dangers involved in the entire project and I think it's perhaps helpful to see what Prime Minister May has been doing in recent months as alternatively offering reassurance to the different wings of the party and I think this document is a stage in that process and let me give you a few examples of what I mean I think this paper definitely tilts the balance towards a harder Brexit than appeared to be the case even 48 hours ago on the one hand and it's clear and other speakers have made this point the dominant motive is the need to be seen regaining control of borders control of labour movement control free movement of EU citizens to the UK but notice on the other hand less attention has been perhaps given to this that in one sector after another the government are soto voce making it clear it will not be included in the new regime for example, some of them are fairly obvious the National Health Service could not possibly continue to function and it does so at the moment with great difficulty without an enormous infusion doctors, medical experts of all kinds, nurses not just from the European Union but very significantly from the European Union it's already clear that the NHS is just one of a number of sectors where the new rules whatever they will be and we don't know much about them whether it's quotas whether it's the need to have prior employment agreements before you can move are not going to apply in the science sector the wider science sector which is of critical importance and probably has the greatest political danger if it goes wrong because not only the British science faculties and universities play a very important part in the European Union's research programme in many cases they play a leadership role in the European Union's research programmes and with it goes a great deal therefore of the funding for British scientific research high tech sectors of one kind or another have also been told that they will be able to freely attract people coming from the rest of the European Union seasonal workers in agriculture is another sector and there are others I don't want to over stress any of these points but what it's a little bit like a complicated polka dance first this way and then that way which is designed to meet objections and reassure people but at the end carries the risk that it will satisfy neither side because when the impact of all the exemptions from the new migration rules as yet to be determined emerge it may well be people say but it's made little or no difference so I think that is the first point I want to make about the volatility that lies the political volatility that lies beneath the attempt by the government to spell out a coherent initiating strategy then there are other issues which I think have yet to be fully addressed the question not just of existing social rights, labour movement rights for British workers and employees but of to what extent the government would be committed to match future progress at the European level so that Britain as it were doesn't get left behind in the way that might be seen as implied in some of the remarks that have been made in the last 24 hours about the fact that the UK reserves the right to adopt a completely different economic model if the negotiations don't succeed which the Chancellor went so far in Berlin as to imply but not quite state might be some kind of tax haven approach with all the implications for lowering of standards cheapening of labour costs in order to achieve competitiveness that way which has already led to questions being raised in the UK by the wider labour movement so there are real elements of unpredictable volatility in the situation how Catherine has quite rightly identified and very clearly identified extraordinary I think unprecedented time frame in which all of this is meant to happen it isn't 2 years of course it is at the best 18 months because at least 6 months will have to be left for the ratification process if there is an agreement and it emerges from it and of course informal talks as she rightly said are certain to begin in parallel with the divorce negotiations with all negotiations including the money to be paid including a lot of other tricky issues but informal talks are one thing when things are put on paper in formal negotiations difficulties can emerge that don't clearly emerge at the level of let's have a chat so we get each others viewpoint as to where you want to go and where we would be prepared to go so I think that there must be a very significant political question mark over the doability of this entire timetable for what is being talked of the nature of any transitional period and there will be an urgent necessity for several different transitional periods according to the way we are going at the present time it seems to me also can't seriously begin until the withdrawal principles are finally agreed and established and there is a very real risk that the clock will simply run out and I think again Catherine is no more than realistic in saying people aren't going to be rushing to extend the clock indefinitely if that is the case and this brings me to another point which is again frankly political but I think it's perhaps interesting to an Irish audience to get the sense of the politics of it across the water what happens when it's brought back to the House of Commons and the House of Lords what happens when whatever agreement there is if it's a mini agreement if it's a mini transitional agreement if it's a bigger agreement whatever here we encounter a quite different set of problems the government may face frankly it can't automatically on its present parliamentary majority guaranteeing passage of whatever is agreed no matter what don't need to take my word for that there are very many leading members of the Conservative Party including former ministers that have spoken outright about their objections to the entire process but of course they couldn't and indeed you might argue democratically should not have tried to block the beginning of the article 50 process but the conclusion of the article 50 process whenever it arises is a very very different a very very different kettle of fish and I think that whether it is in the second half of 20 20 hang on it begins in March 2017 so 18 months would bring us to December 2018 6 months before the expiry of the two-year period there's going to be a very very fraught debate and an unpredictable debate and in my personal opinion by no means an assured debate for the outcome that the government wants I think the risks of that going wrong are far greater than have been generally recognised when the kind of price that will have to be paid in principle for the very limited access that they are likely to secure to the single market on the terms that are likely to be forthcoming and given the fact that the closer they look at the WTO process and all the tripwires that that contains I think their bargaining situation will not get obviously stronger the longer the negotiating timescale passes and then there is another major open question lying behind domestic question in the UK lying behind the government's negotiating strategy Cardiff Edinburgh and Belfast it would be particularly disastrous if there was no administration in Belfast for any significant length of period ahead while this is all going on and I think it wouldn't be so much a matter of dispute between the two traditional communities I think could well be a common ascent that they need an administration one question that is being asked for which there is no clear answer at the moment is in the repatriation of powers that is sought in the British withdrawal negotiation who are the beneficiaries of the transfer of powers in other words what goes to London the kind of way it's spoken of the repatriation of powers the assumption is everything goes to London but that isn't the case any longer certainly the implications of the constitutional settlements the so-called devolution settlements which are becoming more than just minimal devolution I think raise very important questions and there is likely to be serious competition between the emerging different power centres in the UK system between the devolved administrations as a whole and London in the case of Wales for example it actually works in a way that you might not imagine they are not at all anxious to have responsibility for the Welsh agricultural policy given the costs that would be imposed upon the Welsh budget it's something that we wouldn't want voiced upon them whereas in many other issues Edinburgh and Cardiff certainly will be looking to add to their powers because they will argue rightly should be the inheritors under the devolved arrangements of the returned powers I want to just add two final points which you may think are a bit adjacent to this report excellent report and a very clear report and that is we speak Theresa May spoke quite openly and positively about the whole question of Britain's her desire to work as closely as possible and with great friendship and in close amity with our European neighbours as she puts them on security and defence now it's one thing to say this when one could assume that the architecture of western security and defence was impermeable and in place and not likely to change in any way irrespective of these negotiations but following the election of President Trump I don't think that can be taken for granted I don't think it necessarily follows that the alliance structure the NATO alliance structure as we have will survive unscathed the next four years I'm not going to predict because I have no idea absolutely no idea of which direction it could go in but to hear what is being said by the incoming leaders of the new administration a great deal and that I think could put the UK in a particularly awkward situation a year or two hence when it may not be able to count upon the permanence and unchanged nature of the NATO alliance's operation in building on and seeking to keep a handle on the nature of European security and defence development so I don't add anything that's been said to the Northern Ireland thing I found it interesting that the Prime Minister was unable to say much more than any controls on the border would be as frictionless as possible I'm not quite sure that meets the kind of political tests that will and security tests that it may be subject to in the future my very last point then is to say that yes the option for a harder Brexit out of the single market out of the common commercial policy and effectively out of the customs union seeking only external relationships with it is at the radical end of the spectrum that might have been imagined I think it would be wrong not to believe the government is serious about it but it might be equally foolish to imagine that this government will have the political lasting power, staying power to be able to carry the implications of the whole process through to the end I wonder whether in that vote that takes place at the end of the process we might not be faced with the choice of if it's defeated of either a new referendum or a general election or the incurring of a withdrawal of article 50 which is still possible within the two year period as Jean-Claude Piris the great legal expert on these matters has made clear either way we could find ourselves in as unpredictable a situation as we currently face as a result of the events of the last few weeks thank you you may think there's not a lot extra to say after those three excellent contributions and you may well be right but I'd like to start by I suppose putting this report in a context and the context was described at the beginning by Brandon this is the latest output in a 20-odd year to thinking about relationships between Britain and the European Union with a specific reference to the implications for Ireland and when we tried at the end of this report to pull together what were the key issues from an Irish perspective the conclusion was that there are indeed three interconnected themes central to the Brexit negotiation and outcome they've all already been touched upon but to restate them the Irish government's capacity to influence the EU negotiating position while retaining productive links with the UK government and administration secondly finding a solution to the specific challenges posed by Northern Ireland and thirdly developing policy aimed at securing Irish economic competitive post-Brexit taking the longer term view of what needs to be done in this substantial change in the external environment which faces us and I'd just like to briefly reflect on each of these in terms of the government influence on the EU position we're clearly just beginning to and the May speech has helped in this regard to get a clearer sense of what the basic framework of this negotiation would be but as expressed particularly by Catherine and John there needs to be a very acute awareness about the scale of the challenge of succeeding or concluding a negotiation within the timeframe that we're talking about the atmospherics of that political negotiation are going to be crucial and to some extent it could be argued that some of the contributions in some of the context of Mrs May's speech yesterday don't help in that atmospherics but I think at the end of the day what Catherine said this will ultimately be a negotiation a hard headed negotiation based on self-interest of the parties on both sides of the table and the hope has to be that there will be a pragmatic pragmatic conclusion and leading on to a sensible arrangement in regard to transitional arrangements the other aspect is that we and I think we have to be very clear about this that whereas Brexit looms large in all of our thoughts Brexit is not going to be the only thing that's been happening that is going to happen in the European Union European Union is going to have to think ahead five to ten years as to the policies the priorities etc and this is going to represent a challenge for Ireland and it's going to come back to identifying very clearly what do we what direction do we want the European Union to go in over that period what are our priorities who are our allies in attempting to secure that so that seems to me to be part of the whole our whole positioning within Europe over the next five to ten years the second issue and it is really specific to Ireland is the Northern Ireland challenge and here it has to be very clear that the logic of Mrs May's priorities yesterday are that it will be very difficult to achieve some of the other objectives that the politicians state they want to achieve you actually cannot have both an exit from the customs union and the single market and not have the return of the border within this island that's the logic of what you that's the logic of that position so how do you square what are positives in terms of political sentiments in terms of no return of a hard border maintenance of the common travel area how do you square that with practical policies and we're only beginning to I think see some possibilities we're talking about frictionless trade on the basis that something akin to what happens works between Norway and Sweden how can that be further developed and worked on the question of the people how do you achieve the common travel area that's obviously there's still a lot of work to be done in that regard and then there is again what the politics of this is going to be over the next period of time when the first and deputy first minister wrote to the British government in August they talked about a triangular relationship between Dublin, Belfast and London how is that going to be achieved particularly in the context of not having an executive in Northern Ireland the third area is the one that requires us to do some longer term thinking is taking account of the reality that we're going to be in a colder economic space and more challenging economic space post Brexit and there are two dimensions to this both of which are touched upon in the report the first one was what Brendan referred to as the currency issue I think it's a fair to make an assumption that the relationship between the sterling and the euro is going to work to our disadvantage in the medium term the second is that any movement towards Britain's exit of the single market and customs union is going to have some element of trade restrictions which again will make it more difficult for us these two things together point to the requirement to really focus on how does Ireland work towards an enhanced economic competitiveness over the medium to longer term and what needs to be done in order to achieve that Brendan made the analogy of the transitional arrangements that were made in the late 1970s when Ireland moved towards economic and monetary union there's an analogy that can go back even further back in the 1960s as Ireland realized that it had to prepare for more challenging times ahead it had what was called the committee of industrial organization sector by sector we looked at our economy where the weaknesses are where the improvements were needed so that sort of thing is going to be required but we are in a much better position than we were in those 50 or 60 years ago and this I think can be done we are already committed to working harder on our trade diversification diversification policy so our conclusion at the end of this report is that we really are faced this Brexit issue requires us to realize that we have basic choices to make in our national development policy the government has taken the position and there are very good reasons for this that we remain a committed member of EU 27 and we take the consequences of that we take the consequences of it in terms of thinking through what we want from EU 27 as it develops but we also have history and geography dictates this we also have a close connection with the UK and how we square that circle and how we keep those positive connections with the UK to enable us to complete this negotiation as well as possible and to look to the longer term basis of our relationship with the UK that remains one of the key challenges as we go forward so thank you very much indeed