 First of all I want to thank Minister Flamagan for his attendance here today which is deeply appreciated and thank you all for coming. I've been asked to give a scene setting introduction and I want to do so on the basis that Brexit is more likely to happen than that and that we better start thinking the unthinkable. This scene setting focuses on what would happen in the aftermath of a vote by Britain to leave the European Union and ends by outlining some of the scenarios that would apply to its future relationship with the Union as a whole and of course the consequences for Ireland. It will emerge that Brexit is indeed a risky business. So the presentation consists of six parts, the background to the IEA project, the political context for the negotiations, the legal framework in which they would be conducted, the options for the UK post Brexit, some future scenarios for the UK and the protection of Irish interests. As the Minister indicated in his very helpful opening remarks, our project was in the instant was set up 25 years ago under the chairmanship of Dr. Garifus Gerald with Dr. Paul Gillespie as the editor of the various publications it has subsequently produced which now includes three books, numerous papers and an ongoing Brexit brief. There is also a microsite on the IEI website and Dr. Dachio Callig who was our ambassador in London for six years from 2001 now heads the project. So it is no knee jerk reaction to the prospect of Brexit but it's a long term systematic study of Britain's dual sovereignty problem that is to say internally with Scotland and externally with Europe and of course with the political and economic consequences for Ireland. So this presentation draws on the analysis generated by a project team which was made up of individuals from many different disciplines and with various life experiences. So the place to start is the political context and in the event of a vote for Brexit, the political situation will change overnight. It will be immediate, dramatic and profound. In the face of defeat, Mr. Cameron will resign as Prime Minister and the political logic seems to dictate that the leave side will take control of the Conservative Party. Within days, certainly within two or three weeks, there will be a new Prime Minister, a new Cabinet with a new Chancellor, a new Foreign Secretary and many other faces in key ministerial positions. The three key Cabinet ministers and many others besides will be newcomers without relevant experience for the task ahead. More ominously, they will be without a game plan for managing the exit process or constructing a new relationship with the EU. As of now, none exists. In the immediate aftermath, there will be political turmoil, particularly within the Conservative Party. Now bearing in mind the situation in the Labour Party, both of the main parties will be driven by this unity precisely at the moment when coherence and unity are at a premium. The turmoil within the political system will be matched by turmoil on the markets, not but standing the fact that they will have already factored in the Brexit effect. The realisation that Britain is really going to leave the European Union would be like stepping into a cold shower by mistake, but the shock effect on the markets and on sterling would be dramatic, as the Minister had said. But the legal context would be shaped not only by the reaction in Britain, but of course by the reaction in the other member states and within the European Union institutions. This belief, disappointment, resentment and anger will vary from capital to capital, but the common denominator will be hostility towards Britain, which in some cases would be poisonous, the worst possible starting point for doing a deal. And that deal will have to be done with the person who has just unhorsed the Prime Minister with whom they had been dealing in good faith, for whom many have affection. Now an alternative scenario advanced by some Tory MPs as late as two days ago is that the current Chancellor will succeed, Mr Cameron. If so, the negotiating environment will be more positive or less negative compared to that of a government led by Mr Johnson. But the argument that Mr Osborn is more likely to succeed Mr Cameron than Mr Johnson comes across to my mind as unconvincing. It is far more likely that Mr Johnson will become Prime Minister and bring a new tone and style to number 10 Downing Street. Now whether they're best suited for the job in hand remains open to debate. As for the legal framework within which the negotiations will take place, they are set out as we know in the treaty on European Union and in the corresponding treaty on the functioning of the European Union. So in general terms, the first defines the union and the other how it works. They're like the memo and arts of a company. But taken together, they constitute the legal basis on which the union rests and how relations between the member states are to be conducted. So the important point here is that the rules of the game for the negotiations are not going to be made on an ad hoc basis. They are already set in stone. They have the force of law and they are not going to be amended. So we look at the negotiating framework as force set out on Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union and secondly in Article 218 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union. So they complement each other and to be read in tandem. Now under Article 50, the process I would draw is initiated by a very simple notification from the United Kingdom to the European Council that it intends to withdraw from membership of the European Union. Can be done by letter, by facts, even by an email. The article states that in the subsequent negotiations, the UK will be negotiating with the Union as a whole and that the Union will be represented by the European Council which of course consists of the heads of state and government. It is charged with negotiating and concluding to use the words of the article and with the United Kingdom and sets out the arrangements for withdrawal and which takes account of the framework for the future relationship of the Union. So there are two items on the agenda. The arrangements for withdrawal which will be extremely complicated as the Minister has hinted and a framework for the future relationship which could be highly contentious. Now the direct effect of Article 50 is that the UK will be negotiating with the Union as a whole as I said rather than bilaterally with other member states. This has implications for all member states in terms of their strategy and their tactics as well of course for the UK. Now the negotiations themselves are to be conducted under Article 218, paragraph 3 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the key point I think anyway is that the European Council will appoint a negotiator or head of a negotiating team as the article said. In my view, this will almost certainly be Donald Tusk, no doubt assisted by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and other key figures in the Commission. I think there's a unavoidable logic flowing from the stipulation that the withdrawal agreement is to be negotiated by the Union as a whole. It follows that on one side of the negotiating table there will be a collectivity consisting of 27 member states and on the other side one member state acting in its own behalf. Now while all this is going on, the UK will continue to be represented in the Council and in other Councils but in the European Council by its Prime Minister but politically the die will have been cast although still legally a member of the Union, politically it will already have become an outsider. To make the point, the British Prime Minister will be excluded from the Council meeting room and the other Prime Ministers are meeting to decide on their tactics, joint tactics and strategy. Now with regard to the treaties, the point is here that in its capacity as negotiator, President Tusk or some say President Juncker, the task of the negotiator will be to get a unanimous decision out of the 27 member states. But if that proves impossible, then the withdrawal agreement can be adopted by qualified majority. And this again is defined in another article of the Treaty on the Functioning of the Union, this article 238 in paragraph 2. And it's a combination of a majority of the Union's states and population. There must be a majority of both in favour of the agreement. One stipulated a 72% of the member states which would be 15 and 65% of the population. Now in practice as we know these thresholds are generally achieved and the qualified majority voting process itself has an internal dynamic which leads to consensus inside the Council because people don't want to be in the minority. And the odds are that it will work on this occasion. Subject to one major caveat which I'll come to later. Now the logic of qualified majority voting as was intended from the beginning is of course that no member state has a veto over the decision. For the more a blocking minority is very difficult to put together and this occasion I think would be more difficult than normal because those who created would have to live with the consequences of rejecting the withdrawal agreement. So it could be taken generally speaking as a good working assumption that the Council will arrive at a common position no matter how heated the debate inside the Council room or how profound the differences between the member states. What there is a major caveat to be mentioned here as well. If the agreement impinges on the competences of the union it may require a change in the treaties. In which case the Council decision will have to be unanimous. Every member state would then have a veto. That would completely change the political complexion of the negotiations and make the prospect of success far more problematic. It's a sobering thought. There is another issue. Because the European Union is an alliance of peoples as well as states Article 50 gives the European Parliament a role in the decision making process which is easily overlooked. It prescribes that the Council cannot make a decision about the withdrawal agreement until such time as the European Parliament has given its consent to the agreement. This is a process that's been around for 40 years. So there's nothing unusual in this as a procedure as to how the European Union functions as a combination of states and peoples. So in theory the Parliament could delay the Council decision indefinitely by refusing to give its consent for whatever reason. Now in practice it won't do any such thing. But the accepted fact of life is that Parliament has leverage over the Council and it will use it as it thinks fit. So in short the Parliament is going to be a real player here and could be an awkward one if its Eurosceptic minority which is now very substantial decides to kick over to traces. The Minister has mentioned the timetables and that's set out in Article 53. So the wording of the article in the treaty is put forward with what I would call disarming simplicity. It simply states that the treaties will cease to apply to the state in question, the UK, from the date of entering into force of the withdrawal agreement. Cold stuff. In that case it then goes on to put a time limit on the negotiations of two years. So if no agreement has been reached at the end of two years then it's terminated and the UK would overnight fort which seems to be a member of the European Union without any provision being made for its relations with the Union as a whole either political or economic. That would be a pretty drastic turn of events to say the least. So to avoid that doomsday scenario Article 53 goes on to say that the two-year period can be extended by the European Council in agreement with the UK unanimously decided. So it's immediately clear from this formula that any member state would have a veto over the time extension and would have and isn't powered with the capacity to plunge the Union into chaos. So in summary the withdrawal can occur in one of three circumstances within the two years with a deal. At the end of two years with no deal or more than two years with an agreement on a deal. It goes out saying that the ideal outcome would be an agreement within the two years. Now whether a deal can be done within two years is a mood point as can be seen from the following. When it gets underway the process of course is going to consist of parallel and interlocking negotiations. There will be a crucial interpersonal relationship between the new UK Prime Minister and the President of the Council President Tusk. But given the composition of the Council the Prime Minister will have to deal with all of his prime ministerial counterparts all 27 of them both within the Council as a group and separately as individuals. No doubt requiring multiple visits to many of the national capitals. And in addition he'll have to deal personally with the President of the Commission, the President of the European Parliament and it seems inevitable with the presidents of the various European political parties. All in all that's a quite punishing regime. At the same time the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the other senior ministers will have to negotiate with our counterparts in the Council in its various formations with the European Commission and its various directors and with the European Parliament and its many committees. So on top of this there will be hundreds of meetings in sectoral and technical committees consisting of politicians, civil servants and experts. Now this tangled web of negotiations will be coordinated by the Committee of Parliamentary Representatives in Brussels, pro-repair, which will be the spider at the center of the web. So it's going to take purely an effort to get an agreement on the modalities of withdrawal and on the form and content of the future relationship all within the space of two years during which time the United Kingdom will be simultaneously negotiating trade deals with the rest of the world. So by the nature of things these negotiations are going to be conducted in separate compartments as you might call it, high politics, prime ministers, technical and other business by the Commission, sectoral issues by the various configurations of the Council and European issues by the Parliament with the Commission doing a lot of the coordinating work. So I think when you look at the agenda you can divide it before the Council into two, one of which is quite technical which is the withdrawal arrangements but the other is highly political. Now the real challenge here is to fashion a new relationship with between Britain and Europe which meets British objectives, conforms with the treaties and satisfies and protects the national interests of all the other member states. That's quite a challenge. So in our book, Britain and Europe, the End Game, we analyse the options open to Britain and acceptable to the European Union. So the context was as follows and it's remained so that many who favour withdrawal from the EU in Britain nevertheless want to maintain British access to the single market. Now their dilemma is that the more access they secure, the more they have to comply with the rules of the single market thereby creating a trade-off between access and sovereignty. So this has led some to conclude that they would be willing to forego access to the single market as the price of restoring what they regard as national sovereignty. Mr. Gold is one such person. Against that background, the first option that we examined was the Norwegian model involving access to the single market to the European economic area but requiring full compliance with the single market rules including freedom of movement of peoples. And after a lot of enthusiasm in Britain, this model has now got little support. The second was the Swiss model consisting of a series of bilateral agreements including the free movement of peoples. But in the intervening period, that model has fallen out of favour within the EU. The third option we examined was out of associate membership like Turkey. But this is a prelude to full membership and as consequently it was dismissed as a non-runner. So that leaves some form of trading relationship as an option. That could be similar to that concluded by Canada recently or a conventional trading relationship under WTO rules, perhaps under the guise of a regional trade agreement. This dag here is that such deals, as we know from the Canadian experience, take time, a lot of time. And meanwhile, the clock is ticking. So for the sake of completeness, just to say the final model to be mentioned is the second referendum on a deal yet to be constructed between the EU and the Union which would involve substantial reform of the Union as the UK side sees it. This was the original proposal, as you recall, of Mr. Johnson. Since then it seems to have gone off the boil, but from a European perspective, it would be outside the realms of practical politics, to say the least. So in the light of that analysis, the project team is generally of the view that a new form of relationship would have to be devised with the UK. This is not beyond, I think, a lot of experience and too much experience in dealing with Europe as a whole. It's not beyond the ingenuity of the politicians, the civil servants, diplomats or legal experts. The institutional innovation is one of the great strengths of the European Union and I think it would be brought to bear in this instance. However, that puts the spotlight on political will. So normally, the necessary political will could be taken for granted. But the impending elections in some of the member states put it in question and they could weaken the political will perhaps drastically. In fact, everything depends, everything depends on the continued existence and strength of the Franco-German alliance which is at the core of the union. Now the electoral timetable is not helpful. First of all, it includes a presidential election in France in April and May of next year and a federal election in Germany the following August, September. Now it's widely accepted, as we know, on the basis of the opinion polls that President Hollande will not be re-elected and that Madame Le Pen of the Front National will do well. Some believe she will win. In which case, all bets are off. Others go for Alain Joutain which has a more likely successor. In which case, all bets are on again. So, up to recently in Germany, it was expected that Mrs. Merkel will be returned as chancellor but the immigration crisis has weakened her politically as seen from the rise of the national populist AFD, alternative for the Dutch land, that party. And ominously, rumbling is within the Christian Democratic Union in Nigeria that it might end its long-standing relationship with the CDU. Now where she to lose, it would be back to the drawing board for everybody. In short, the Franco-German alliance is under stress at the very moment when it's needed most. And there are dangers in Italy which is always central to the balance where Prime Minister Renzi has gambled everything on a referendum. And if he loses, it's going to shift the balance in the nature of within the council and shift its nature of political complexion. Italy will go Eurosceptic probably under Mr. Senor Grillo. And then add in uncertainty about Spain as we know at the moment, Poland, Austria, Hungary and even the Netherlands and some elements of Scandinavia such as Finland. So in certain circumstances, the consensus model and there is a consensus model which has prevailed since this union was set up in the 1950s, it could unravel. And certainly the communitaire spirit that produces win-win solutions would be weakened, paradoxically to the disadvantage of Britain who has so often criticized it. So the complicate matters even worse in politics is like that. The UK takes over the EU presidency from July to December, 2007, then right in the middle of the negotiations. So nobody knows how this will play out, especially if there are situations in which there is a perception of conflict of interest between the chair and the council as a whole. So we then went on to analyze the, I'll move quickly here because of that background through the sort of psychological atmosphere prevailing and governing the outcome. The first one was the benign negotiating environment where everybody is set on a deal and it happens quickly. Other than the spectrum as Dagger's drawn, the poisonous atmosphere, the negotiations are characterized by animosity, bad will, unpredictable outcome. It's a zero sum game and most people lose. Third, lies somewhere in the middle, resulting from various developments, changes in governments, panic on the markets, the sheer complexity of the whole process. And we have called this confusion and we give rise to an outcome which is messy with everybody losing out and nobody's fault but many fear that this is going to be the outcome. That's where life is. The fault is at Limbo land, in other words, if you don't get to the two years and the guillotine comes down and the UK simply says it's to be a member overnight. Enlightened self-interest is what people like me hope for but then maybe to being too rational. So you're going to get a good outcome. Nobody knows how it's actually going to play out because of all the moving parts in play over the next few months. So just to conclude, as the minister indicated in the closing section of the speech, it's self-evidence that Ireland will need to be crystal clear in circumstances of a Brexit about his national interest and how they are to be protected. So analysis so far within the group has come up with a series of red line issues, self-evident, border controls, customs, which the minister mentioned, tariff regime, supply chains, agribusiness exports, protection of the financial services sector, maintenance of our foreign direct investment regime, it'll accept uncompetitive regulation, energy and so on. So more issues can be added here and we will be very pleased to accept input from business. A final thought. I've said the opinion polls indicate that Brexit is a possibility and I think a real possibility. We don't know what that would entail, but even without a benign bespoke solution for the UK, Britain would be isolated psychologically and politically from Europe to an extent a two degree that is greater than at any point in the last half century when it joined in this great enterprise. Hence it will be separated from Ireland to a non-precedented extent since 1973. But the great benefits of joint membership of the union as the minister has outlined would be undone. And this would pose the biggest strategic challenge for Ireland since the advent of economic and monetary union when we chose to join and Britain did not. Should the withdrawal agreement require parliamentary ratification, as seems likely, there will be calls here, let's be very clear, for a referendum that is inevitable in my mind. And if a referendum is held on the withdrawal agreement, it'll be on the ratification of the withdrawal agreement, there will be a lot of opposition and we know from experience that there are so many reasons always for voting no. So let's face the fact that it could be defeated. In which case, of course, our membership of the union itself here would be called into question. So Brexit is not just a risky business, it could turn out to be an existential threat. So I hope this overview hasn't frightened you too much. I hope it's been of some help setting the scene for the debate that follows and just that we can add by way of a PS. In the event of the vote being yes, as we would all wish, of Britain staying in, then we will have another conference at which we will examine the consequences of the February agreement on how Britain's relationship with the European Union will work out. I hope to see you at that. Thank you.