 Rwy'n agos gyda Brexit i fynd yn rwyf. Rwy'n agos youd ar Eiland a Oedden setyniad. Roedd fynd yn ymlaen i Brexit i fynd yn Ysgolol Newyddol ac yn Ysgolol Newyddol. Mae nid yn aci defnyddio osod o fwy evolvech. Fel hyn rydym wedi bod nhw ymlaen i Brexit i fynd yn ymlaen i ymlaen i Brydnol ac i Gweithdoedd. Mae rhaid ei wneud bod yn bod chi dweud os ymlaen, yn rhaid, yn gweithio. Roedd pheth ei ddweud i'r rhagornai yn y Llyngprifeddau, ac wrth gwrs, rwy'n gwneud hynny i gael y dyfodol. Ond rydyn ni'n cyfweld i'n meddwl y ddefnyddio'r gymaint gyda'r gyd-aidd, ac rwy'n meddwl y Dynhaligon a Toma yn gweithio'n eich bod yn ddefnyddio'n gymun yw, a rydym ni'n gwneud y ddweud yw'r gyd-aidd, ac mae'n gwneud yn wneud, rydyn ni'n gweithio'n atnod, More than ever now, this country will need more critical thinking, more open thinking, more enlightened sort of thinking, and I think this is a great place for me to do it, and I'm really honoured to be offering my tiny contribution to that this evening. So I've been with the Financial Times for 23 years and I've been in London twice, New York, Prague, Milan and Ankara as a correspondent. So I used to come back a lot because my family lived here, but coming back initially was actually very, very difficult because I was in London, I was writing for the Lex column. I don't know whether any of you read the Lex column. Great. One of the best jobs ever is writing for the Lex column, I can tell you. But I came back at the beginning of 2014 because I thought it would be a very interesting challenge to be the Ireland correspondent, to come back to a country I'd left nearly a quarter of a century earlier and to discover lots of things about it that had changed in the time I was away. And one of the questions that everybody asked me when I came back was, has Ireland changed in the time you've been away? And I always said, well, it better have because I've been away for 25 years and so I have been figuring out and discovering how it has changed for the last three years and in fact it has changed, I think, more than I expected in many ways. And one of the first things I discovered was that one of these sort of Irish paradoxes that this country had suffered a very severe financial crisis caused by the fact that we were building way too many houses. And yet when I came back in 2014 I couldn't find anywhere to live. So I had a lot of adjusting to do and I didn't know any of the people I needed to know in order to do my job properly so I had spent a good bit of time doing that. But in any case Ireland has changed dramatically and for the better I think in the last 25 years and one reason for that I'm sure is that we have our position as members of the European Union has begun to pay off in a very big way in the last 25 years. So we joined in 1973 and for maybe 15 years it didn't really mean much because Europe was very limited and we were a very small country and I think it took a long time for this country to get to grips with what it meant to be a member of the then economic community and now the European Union. And we've been outside the mainstream of European history for such a long time, the Irish have. I was very struck by that. The other day I'm reading at the moment a history of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson, he's a British historian. It's a very big book about 900 pages and Ireland has mentioned once in those 900 pages and then only in passing. So it's a history of the Holy Roman Empire and Ireland wasn't part of that empire. But still this is a thousand years of European history that we had no role in shaping in any way although it may have shaped us. So we are or have been for a long time relatively peripheral and of course that was emphasised by lots of people during the financial crisis. That you're a peripheral country so you belong with the Portuguese and the Greeks and you are one of the victims if you like of the Euro and the failure to create a common currency that actually works and that is backed up by sort of centralized institutions and mechanisms that just weren't created at the time. And I think that wasn't really true actually in 2008 because I think we have become much more part of the mainstream of Europe and I was very happy about that. I want to put my cards on the table immediately. I am a very strong believer in the European Union as a force for good and Ireland's membership of that union and also of the United Kingdom's membership of that union. For me Brexit is a very sad and I think destructive event. But just going back for a second I just want to tell you a little story about the way some Europeans think about Ireland and look at Irish people and how they see us. So I left Ireland in 1992 to go off to fulfil my let's call it dream of being a foreign correspondent and so I was working at the Irish times and I was going off to Prague to base North South of Eastern Europe which is where everything was happening at the time. Some of you are probably too young to remember that. And I also was going to be doing some work for the FT. This is before I joined the paper. And the first story I covered was the split of Czechoslovakia. So I was going to Prague and the Czech Republics were breaking up. So I thought that it would be more interesting to cover that story from Bratislava than from Prague. So I went down to Bratislava a couple of days before the end of 1992 because the split was officially happening at midnight on New Year's night. I went to the foreign ministry to get my press accreditation and there was a young woman sitting behind the desk and when I handed her my Irish passport she jumped up, ran around the desk and gave me a big hug and said, You're Irish. Finally somebody who might understand what we Slovaks are trying to do. Because for the last two or three days she had been, you know, there were lots of German and British and American reporters arriving in Bratislava and handing over their passports and saying, What are you guys doing? You know, why are you breaking up from this great country and you want to become a small little peripheral country in Europe? And they didn't quite get it and she seemed to think that I did somehow. I'll always remember that particular moment because it was a nice little moment but also the story itself was about something that we don't see in Europe these days which was the creation of a new border. Now the velvet divorce as it was called was quite successful and very peaceful and I think the Czechs and Slovaks tend to get on reasonably well together. But it was the erection of a border in Europe and we don't see it, we don't see that happening anymore. But it's a cautionary tale I think that the history of the EU is presented as a case of borders falling down and yet European history is full of changing borders and borders going up as well as down. And I think that it is very dangerous to forget that aspect of European history and we need to bear in mind that borders can go up as well as down and they can go up just as quickly as they come down and that was brought home to me very much in Czechoslovakia. The little nationalisms that the EU was supposed to kind of suppress, I think actually it has given them space to emerge and to say well we're here too and what are you going to do about us. That's not a bad thing, I'm not suggesting that these little places haven't got the right to do that but I think that we don't quite understand the EU if we don't accept that it has created this space for separatism and I think it's a very important aspect of Europe that we shouldn't really forget. Now Maeve asked me here to talk about Brexit so I just wanted to set a bit of context there because I think that it's very important to see Brexit in the European context because in Britain it's viewed only through a British context or more particularly an English context. And I think we outside Britain look at it in a different way and obviously the Irish have a particular perspective on it but I think it's the British failure to see Brexit, to see if membership of the EU first of all in a kind of European context and then see Brexit in the European context that's sort of leading to a lot of misunderstanding between the British and the Europeans that I think will probably mean that when the negotiations start they'll break down fairly quickly before maybe restarting again but there will certainly be a moment of colossal misunderstanding between them at an early stage that I think we have to take it as red almost. I suppose the question we should all ask ourselves is what is the European Union and for me the European Union is Europe's post war settlement but that is fundamentally what it is. It's a political construction aimed at restoring the Franco-German partnership or building a Franco-German partnership and creating the post war conditions where France and Germany would never again fight each other and it has been hugely successful in doing that. But that is fundamentally what the EU is for me and what the British are doing in voting to leave the EU is they're walking away from that. That is what Brexit means to me. I don't know whether it means that to a lot of British people but certainly I think to a lot of Europeans and I would consider myself in this context of European that's what it means to me. They are turning their backs on the European post war settlement and for a country, for people whose parents and grandparents contributed so much blood and treasure to creating the conditions that allowed the EU to emerge and to flourish is a very shocking thing I think and a very negative one and I just think it's very important to see it in those historical terms if we're going to understand what Brexit is and why it is such a negative event for Ireland, for Britain and for Europe but particularly for the United Kingdom. I think the British tended to take a very transactional approach to Europe and a bit more single market here in terms of a bit less regulation there, that kind of approach and they didn't really get the political dimension to it. So there is a cultural gap between English people and I use the word vis-a-vis and Europeans and particularly the sort of Franco-German almost the sort of Catholic European ideal. That was brought home to me quite forcefully during the campaign actually. There was a debate on the BBC hosted by Victoria Derbyshire. I don't know whether you saw it. It was from Glasgow and it involved young people under 30. There was a group of leavers, a group of remainers and a group of undecidents and at some stage in the debate the discussion came around to the Erasmus programme which I'm sure some of you have benefited from. It's one of these I think wonderful pan-European contracts that gives lots of opportunities to young students. One young woman who was a remainder was asking whether she could still be considered for Erasmus exchange programme if Britain left the EU. This leaver, another young woman, turn to her and said, well why don't you go and study abroad? What are you doing here in our universities here? And she said, her point was that British universities are better than universities in Europe and she says and I quote, we're better than the EU. That's why we should leave. So that is a major reason why the British forces leave. Forget about immigration or jobs or whatever. There's cultural forces at play here that we're only now beginning to understand. I think that it's very important that we understand the cultural forces at play if we're going to understand what Brexit means and what it might mean for Ireland, what it might mean for Europe and what it might mean for the UK. I suppose you could argue that that young woman was at least being honest when she said, I think I'm better than the European therefore I want to leave. It's maybe a difficult concept to appreciate but at least she was being honest because let's face it the leave campaign was entirely dishonest in its approach. The entire campaign was based on half baked fantasies and falsified statistics and outright lies and I think that's why I find it very hard to accept Brexit really because it was fraud on the public will have very negative consequences and I think that's a great pity. I think it has altered my view of Britain as a stable pragmatic country as a result. Such a flimsy argument could be used on such an important issue as Britain's future in Europe. When I was growing up I always thought that Britain was the most stable, the most pragmatic of the sort of great nations and I do consider Britain to be a great nation. And yet when I look across the IRC now I don't see that anymore and I think that it's this destabilising impact inside the UK that poses the threats to Ireland and I think maybe one or two opportunities as well to Ireland. This is the cauldron in which the whole thing is going to be debated now and the exit negotiations will have a sort of Greek chorus in the media in Britain that will set the agenda and will sort of demand this and that and it looks like Theresa May is not able to stand up to the Daily Mail and is unwilling to do so. So I'm not entirely confident about a deal that minimises the negative effects on the UK and leaves Europe more or less unscathed because that's the only kind of deal that will really minimise the effects here in this country. So it is the constitutional upheaval in the UK I think that poses perhaps the biggest sort of long-term threat or not a threat but certainly has the most serious long-term consequences I think for Ireland. Everybody is very focused on trade quite rightly and on the immediate consequences for the good fight agreement and peace process and again quite rightly. I think trade, the trading relationship between Ireland and Britain will clearly depend on the trading relationship between Britain and the EU but I think that there's so much focus on that trading relationship now that a trading deal probably will be done because it needs really to be done to get it out of the way if nothing else. And Barnier, Michelle Barnier is to all intents and purposes of the trade and go theatre. So I mean it may very well be that the economic cost to the UK of leaving the EU is pretty small actually in the long term maybe the economy might be a couple of percentage points smaller in ten years time than it was then it would have been if Britain had stayed in the EU but I think it's possible that the consequences economically will not be as great as some of the more exaggerated claims. The real cost of leaving the EU of course is political and I think this is the bit that the British don't really get actually at the moment it seems to me and I think it's political in the sense that it has caused enormous constitutional uncertainty inside the UK. Literally everything is up for grabs. First of all the Brexit vote was a very aggressive manifestation of English nationalism and I think that cultural effect that I referred to earlier on is part of that. And that has profound consequences for Scotland and for Northern Ireland. And I think we will see those consequences in Scotland first. There almost certainly will be a second independence referendum. And it may not be won by the independence and then there might be a third one because I think that the momentum seems to me to be in favour of Scottish independence because if the post Brexit political future of Britain of the Scottish English partnership comes down to a clash of nationalism which it is doing at the moment then English nationalism is going to win that argument at every turn because it's so much more powerful and aggressive. And I think that if Scottish nationalism is as genuine and deep rooted as say Irish nationalism was and perhaps it may not be but if it is then I think Scotland will become independent at some point although probably not in the next two years. Scotland leaving the UK is effective at the end of the union. Scotland is the kind of spiritual home of unionism not the North. And a lot of unionists in the North would regard themselves as Ulster Scots. I mean Arlene Foster is at the moment. I mean the other day she came out with the proposal when she was talking to Sinn Fein to say okay you can have your Irish language act if we include Ulster Scots in it now. I'm sure she doesn't speak Ulster Scots. But Peter Robinson has identified himself as an Ulster Scots for example. So Ulster Scots there is an element of the Ulster Scots mentality about relatively mainstream unionists in Northern Ireland. And I think that if Scotland leaves then that will have a fairly significant cultural effect on unionists in the North that we saw a bit of during the 2014 referendum campaign. I was in the North a good few times during the Scottish independence referendum campaign in 2014. I was in the North of Ireland a good few times. And Scottish unionists wanted no talk whatsoever with Ulster Unions. None at all. The orange order in Belfast was going to take a big delegation of people over to Edinburgh at some point before the referendum, a week before the referendum actually I think. And basically the Scots said oh no thanks we do not want you we don't want your support. Because you know as far as they were concerned Scottish unionism is an inclusive thing whereas Ulster unionism was kind of exclusive as they saw it. And it was too sort of orange based. But in any case my point is that I think that Northern Ireland will be really adrift if Scotland were to leave the UK as a result of Brexit. And I'm not predicting that that's going to happen but my hunch is that the sort of long term dynamic inside Britain is that it will happen at some point. And that raises I think a question for people in the republic and nationalists if you want to call us that more generally but also I think a very profound question for unionists and something that they really are not thinking about. And it's this that Irish nationalism is no longer a threat to Ulster unionism. Certainly not a violent threat and you know all of the arrangements between unionists and nationalists in the north. They're all enshrined in internationally recognized agreements that are admired around the world. And so the real threat to the survival of Northern Ireland inside the union is actually English nationalism not Irish nationalism. And I think we need to start thinking about the consequences of that actually and certainly unionists are not thinking about that because I spent a lot of time with unionists in recent times and I can assure you that they are absolutely not thinking about it and that's a great pity. I'm not predicting United Ireland but I again I think that but I think the north is it's very very divided over Brexit and Brexit is a huge issue up north and not every unionist voter voted for Brexit I think. But so there you know the unionist community is I think divided over Brexit as well. I think that this is a certain element of Buyer's remorse in Arlene Foster and those because they allowed the DUP's pro Brexit stance during the referendum campaign to be set by the DUP's MPs at Westminster who are you know sort of in the evangelical wing and they're also on the sort of right of the Tory party as well. So I mean that they are obviously members of the DUP but they are very close to the right wing of the Conservative party and I think that that has split the unionism I think. So I think you know I think the consequences of Brexit are politically rather than economic that's I guess one of the things I'm trying to say there the immediate risks are economic certainly in terms of trade. And if Britain crashes out of the EU then it's going to be very difficult to see how there won't be customs posts and borders and what have you. And you know the border between say Nuri and Dondog or Lyford and Derry or places like that will become a thing again. It's not a thing at the moment but it will become a thing again and that has a lot of very negative consequences. And I think that we here in this little republic on the periphery of Europe are going to be asked some pretty serious questions about ourselves and I'm speaking here as an Irishman not as an FT journalist I guess. Questions about ourselves our relations with Europe are we really Europeans and for example are we in favour of greater European of greater Eurozone integration because that's going to happen. It has to happen if the Euro is going to be a success. Unless Marine Le Pen is elected in France which I don't think she will but if she were to be elected I'm sure she would have a referendum on the Euro and I suspect the French would vote to leave. And if the French don't vote to leave the Italians might because Bepic Grillo is a bigger I think he might be a bigger threat to Italy I should then Le Pen is to France. And they are both very anti Euro and indeed the Euro of course is a mistake. I mean it's very hard to justify the Euro but I think that the country that should really leave the Euro is Germany not any other country. If Germany left I think the Euro would become a sort of soft Mediterranean currency if I may put it like that which really is what it should have been from the start. But I think that it will ask to raise questions about not just whether we're willing to support that but are Irish people ready to play a bigger role in European defence? I would argue that Ireland should, the Republic should join NATO as part of a, certainly a United Ireland should join NATO. Absolutely certainly because Northern Ireland is already in NATO and of course to all intents and purposes we are too. We are our defences in the hands of NATO and I think that we need to start thinking way beyond how many jobs are we going to get out of the city of London because we're not going to get very many. Lloyds isn't coming here, Lloyds of London, AIG is not coming here. Where are we going to put them? There aren't any, there's no where to live. Also I don't know how familiar you are with the city and I'm sure you're all very familiar with it but at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley are all of those enormous banks that work in London. They all have, they're employed thousands of what you could only call servants, cleaners, people to take their laundry to the dry cleaners, people to drive them home at night. There's an entire economy built around them, a service economy built around them that I don't think we could really create here even if we wanted to. I think that, and I'm conscious of time, that I suppose what I'm really trying to say is that Brexit is a political act and we need to start thinking about it in political and larger terms than simply jobs or trade. And I don't, for a moment, downplay the threat to trade and the damage that could be done to the Irish food industry. But it's much more than that and I think that Europe will be fine after Britain leaves. I would prefer Europe to have Britain in it because it's a very global country and it's a bit of a dissenter from the consensus, which is always good. But I think for us here in Ireland it requires I think a change in strategic thinking that we haven't managed to do for a long time and I think it's a very grave threat in those terms and I think it's a very negative development and I'm really sorry it's happening but it is definitely happening.