 Good afternoon. I think it's John Rowe from the Department of Health and the Cabinet's general. I think you've all heard it from here since the very beginning. It's my great pleasure to welcome you here to our office and also to our last session this afternoon. This session will be a purely interactive session with our four public members and we'd like to finish around about the 4.30 an hour, because of the cost, and to involve you with as many Q&As as we want at the end of the afternoon. So, very briefly, just to introduce my panel, we've got all of them, but very briefly just to remind you, Dan McCoy is the Chief Executive Officer for ILEC, close to the suit back in July 2009. Beside him is John McRae, who is the Director General of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce from a lengthy career in banking with Royal Bank Scotland and Ulster Bank Group. Neil McCarty is the Managing Director of the Cork Airport, and our final letter by the end of the panel, which is Chairman Donny, is a partner in the Tax Services Group at PwC here in Dublin. I'm going to start by May with a question to Danny. I'm constantly in the context of figures from the Enterprise Ireland published last week, which said that the group in exports to the United Kingdom is down from 12% in 2015 to just 2% in 2016. To you, I understand that it's all about trade and investment, and therefore, in your view, the optimum strategy is to collaborate and compete with the United Kingdom. What does that actually mean? Yeah, so, maybe just make a mistake on the last point of the other statement. Trade and investment are not the same thing as small economy like ours. What I mean here is that when you look at trade flows, there's a lot of prism put on the trade flows like it normally comes. Most of the trade from Ireland is a function of an investment. You know, the MetTech doesn't grow on the ground in the West of Ireland. It was the initial investment decision by a farmland MetTech company to make this decision into Ireland. And at the moment, of those two very big sectors, about 46% or so of their exports go to the EU-26. So it's huge. There's only half the story. So the other part is contestable in a hard Brexit, where we can address more opportunities. And on the separate side, there is trade related to the natural assets, the grass, the agriculture, the agriculture, and that requires a soft Brexit because we need to have access to markets. And so it is difficult, then, in that context to have a singular, optimal strategy. We need to both compete on the investment and collaborate on the trade. We need a soft Brexit on the trade. If it was purely investment, then a hard Brexit would actually suit our... And so that's what I mean. We don't find a way of delaying the trade. And is that what it is? I'm not sure it's realistic or not, but I certainly don't believe that. I'm not sure of the view that we are firmly with a consistent policy in the EU-27. I don't know if it's politically distorted, but if you believe that it's a business optimal strategy, then you're fully yourselves. You're already making decisions about where to try to get over the problem on the collaborate trade position. They're already moving to the inside in the same customers union. If you believe that Britain's not going to compete on corporate taxation, then you're also going to do that. Business nodes were in this dilemma. Ireland has to try to find some blended solution. And we have to be clever enough to be able to say Britain needs a good deal because that deal, fundamentally, is our deal. Come on, a blended solution that Dan has just said there. So for Irish businesses, we do a lot of business with the UK, and I don't know if you can see that in the book, because it's a hard way to understand this. He's such a neat and positive and directed solution for everything to possible. And, you know, this is a political outcome, but a city for a reason, and certainly a business outcome. So Ireland's possible because it's political, and the political steps that get taken, you know, go forward into whatever happens next. We're in the business, I'm trying to talk about that. For business, large are small. Business is like that. It doesn't have a point to be the necessary, because it just wants to get business done, and it would find a way to get business done. And it's going to have to find a way in certain circumstances where none of this makes any sense for a UK business to be able to see that all. This has to do with what, you know, the key, big, heavy weights and financial services to which, so it hasn't given them the deal that they largely thought they were going to get. And small enterprise, like all of the UK, and the Irish economy, has nothing in it from this to the process at all. It's completely exposed. But don't read across to say, so that means it's just going to sit there and say, we'll take a look at the problems. Business is pragmatic and practical. In a huge number of cases, of all problems, we're already thinking about what happens next. And we're taking practical actions and leading from the object what a sensible challenge in significant measure talks about. But thinking about how you turn that into opportunity. And that arises from a straight convention of business analysis of where's the winners and where's the losers. What is stopped and what is made possible by all of this. And macro factors like the tax rate, there's no doubt about that. The whole of Ireland doesn't have a lot of financial space legal though. Britain's 2 trillion pounds of debt there's consumers in order to support that. So business and trade is a big issue at the moment. Does that mean the same model? Is a responsibility on trade and Irish business to do something? Is an overall view here that is a responsibility on business to do something? Of course. In the UK at least. We had a bit of this here in the past ourselves. This is a state project that deserves for that in the UK. It's placed itself in a terrible particular to passive uncertainty and the loss of significant markets. And our own diplomats meanwhile on this island have done extraordinary work in the way to bring about a situation in this tiny little island beside a slightly larger island offshore of the continent has been called out as having unique exposure in unique circumstances that deserve a unique hearing. Action and steps can't be just sat on shoulders of diplomats and officials no matter how excellent they are. That's the call for business to come forward with a pragmatic thinking that says well, how would you want open our software borders? How would you want free movement? How would you want trade in the context of at least work circumstances? It's time for business to get together and look at how those solutions are going to get to the next step so far. And to pick up John's thought there it's up to business to come up with solutions and to bring them to politicians to bring them to negotiations. You were getting earlier that referred to creating a business. That's a huge business around not just in people coming in and out but also leasing business in on it. Are there practical solutions that reminds you of problems that you foresee before? Before we define solutions we need to find the problems in terms of education. Michael O'Leary is talking about it on the screen and when airports and airlines are violent in the community we need to take those. Absolutely aligned with Michael O'Leary in terms of what he said. What he said was some of the things that we most value, we take for granted and so your ability to get the fame in Dublin Airport to comply to whom the Asia flight to Timishwara in Romania is governed by the Gull open skies and everybody in the state has got open skies. So open skies came from the 1980s and a lot of people in this room don't remember from the 1980s we had stayed there until it was lost and there was protection of national air and there was restrictions in public and there was a lot of red tape and I went over a certain age who remember things like the Shannan stop over where he wants to go to Chicago and he said, we need you and we don't do the word visionary but we knew it was visionary back in the 80s so we can't have this situation but everything got open skies and what it says is that there's going to be free market competition and aviation, there will be no protections we're going to restrict state aid to where it's absolutely determined and necessary and that fairer prices are determined by market forces and that rider can't fly from Hamburg to Croatia without any red tape and what we're saying is that open skies are an EU concept and when Britain divorces the EU it divorces, for example, open skies and so whilst they want back into it they will have to negotiate their way back into it and it makes sense for everybody to let them back in but as of the day that Britain leaves they need things like open skies and so what he's saying is as part of the framework in place there to go for an air travel there will be shocks to the system and so we're saying as an aviation industry we're saying don't forget aviation it is critical to tourism there's a lot of business people here business is central to everything but on the 33 million passengers who travel through we're hoping to borrow their bus after 80% of those to find their reason has been a pleasure and so business is only 20% of the body of a family flight a bit more on each one, a bit more on Amsterdam but 80% of people who use an air car should have had to find their reason later it can be annual, holiday or weekend later business, friends, family, local, funeral but it's later and so on Britain is the biggest market for that and so what I'm saying today is that I'm saying to watch aviation it has a massive effect on travel and tourism travel and tourism applies to more than 9 people this accounting and if we don't replace the decent framework there's going to be a shock to that system the CSR responding function figures and they show that British markets are very important to Ireland so we go back to your little question about solution and rather than waiting for this to happen we should be marketing Ireland in the UK so let's not just be victims of outbreaks we need to increase the body of tourism Ireland, the Irish tourism industry the Federation said 12 million experts need to market out of the body and we need to diversify to new markets in the United States and Ireland and so on but there's things we need to do now in terms of preparedness for outbreaks that are going to be a shock to the system there are opportunities for Ireland in relation to where I live and you would imagine that friends are going to be underlined by such countries as you have one of the peculiarities of the freedom of movement within the EU is that in Ireland you operate from point to point within the EU and past the EU so people don't realise that and so there's peculiarities of the opportunity and threat between that despite perception you can't really run their shares or have a foreign interest easy yet because majority control the UK so some of these companies are going to have to put in place new structures in terms of how they're going to operate in the United States and there's going to be potential Ireland that are going to make a set of new policies British based Ireland is incredible there's opportunities for the United States but even at the simplest level and just talking to the traffic public it would appear that you're freezing so that's very small or rare for the public because it brings it it's a shock to the system it's mostly made with some positive I mean the hardest level of positive I put that to you your financial services I do see opportunities in that I don't think I would attribute any specific opportunities around our companies to Brexit because you know remember Ireland has built its aircraft racing industry up over the past 40 years and the UK I don't think we would have seen as a particular competitor for example in that sector our competitors tend to be further filled the likes of Singapore and we hear over the next month or so that Hong Kong is also trying to get in on the aircraft racing act as well so having said that 40 years of experience 40 years of the infrastructure that Ireland has in aircraft racing and my infrastructure there are a lot of people directly employed in the aircraft racing sector but all of the surveillance are equal structure as well I suppose on the likes of ourselves who provide services to the likes of the banks who provide services to the sector are well embedded here and I don't see a particular threat to that the go opportunity is still growing so we will take advantage of that I think from a tax point of view we are well positioned certainly the ETAS is always the point to the corporate tax regime that we have 12.5% tax rate which I noted from the conservative party last week I think it was that Theresa May was talking about reducing UK corporate tax rate to 17% the lowest corporate tax rate in the developed world well but the 12.5% rate is certainly really really important but the importance of that would differ from sector to sector within the financial services area the very big players the very big banks are probably more focused on regulatory requirements than tax rate but other people such as the local dealer sector the tax rate the corporate tax rate will be important for them but what is really important more important probably the corporate tax rate the personal tax rate and that's because I think we are all becoming more and more convinced that what wins we will have and we will have wins here we are often seeing some more is going to be those wins are going to be very people really the the charter for quite a number of months certainly started this year was around what will the local regulator to the extent that is a local regulator because the ECB really controls everything but to what extent the local regulator will accept as little as possible here compared to what other regulators are looking for there was a big charter on that which really didn't make any of us be that easy but what has happened in more recent times as the ECB has come out has made very very strong statements that there will be no race to the following as far as regulations is concerned that they are not going to accept shell companies in any jurisdiction there needs to be people to manage risks supervise the business and all of that sort of stuff and this is really good news for Ireland it's a message that the central bank here has been giving out really from the outset so we are going to win business and it means people coming here but to maximise the opportunity we need to sell our personal tax rates better and have the right tax cut in the region John alludes to the fact that Ireland is on the budget with constraints still and we are hearing more of that as the ECB is going by so there may not be a whole heap of that government fees that it can do on tax rate at home perhaps these positive noises may affect that but I think the messaging is important because when you see comparatives of Ireland with its main competitors around Europe and many competitors really being Frankfurt, Paris, Luxembourg and Amsterdam when you see those comparisons in personal tax rates Ireland always comes in at the top there's always this headline rate of 52% which is higher than anyone else's but that's actually very much leading because in the first instance that's a headline tax rate it's not an effective tax rate actually the effective tax rate is probably more around 40% and that's an all in rate but also when you take into account that the type of people who are coming in here will be able to avail what's called a special assignment relief program SAR which is a relief that will reduce their income tax from say that 40% down to something more than 36% then we're in the ballpark with everyone else and better than them in his business Thanks Jim I'm going to turn the topic of me to John Bradley here and his papers refer to Alton today the dominance of FTI in the Irish manufacturing and in some sectors of market services has created an industrial strategy to divide that is an healthy and not often found to the same extent in other developed countries so he goes on to say that dealing with Brexit is a challenge but it should provide an opportunity for completing the modernisation of our indigenous SME sector That would be too important for me to know because it's actually what I said earlier on it's a real distinction between the trade because our SMEs but they do trade internationally are heavily dependent and particularly go down to industries that are actually possibly unrelated so they far interact with us If you have a real analysis that looked at the spin over effect of the FTI model you will find that a lot of the SMEs who are connected with the FTI are going to export as SMEs avoiding them so it took the distinct SME from the FTI model that referred to heavily dependent so John's right but I think the diagnosis is not to say we've gone to focus in on one or the other because the whole story is de-work I think it's been an absolute game changer for Ireland which is when I was seeing substance and tax plans should be aligned a lot of people are saying that those GDP numbers are not reflective of something but that is not reflective of the experience of somebody on the street at that moment the economy grew not by 26% in 2015 but by 33% in one year that's what's driving what came more crucially it also generated a surprise to half a billion of profit taxation in other words 20 billion of profits in the Irish economy in 2015 and I haven't seen anybody try to take that money off the table and put it into infrastructure that's non-recurrent government is saying they won't react but the problem is the private sector has already reacted people are being competed out of the rents in this part of the city by that very same phenomenon the rental market because when you rate that along the weekend 70 euros per square foot I can guarantee you that SNE or even the large artists are not able to compete with those kind of rents so the phenomenon is here already but we seem to have our head in the sun and then some people are saying we should make a distinction between these two just businesses that's just crazy we have an asset try to make sure that that asset is actually a solution that involves blending we don't blend we don't blend and we don't find methods to blend my view is a very serious problem the good splinter in the Irish business model different sectors completely different business models and so if we go one size it's going to yield for a separate approach to the collective Ireland will be split and John Brown will be between two positive and the opportunity to compete with modernisation in the SNE centre is a problem so John Brown just as I started to do the idea is the latest standard of audience and so that's a piece of the word it does cause it to pause and say that in second and two obviously your problems to help them before for Irish SNE in the SNE in Ireland in second and two wasn't exactly a bad problem actually the job we got we couldn't get a proper job and all those types of things and the work that people have done since then over a big period of time off the back of how we availed of the EU membership model that drove our FDI model and many other things an enterprise that I've had the whole job that our indigenous firms were given to the success of internationalism over a million SNE's by a million people what over 98% of the total business population that's meant to say it's an appropriate door and it's come along and Irish firms as a broad are willing to punch on the marketplace that they have and there's much more to the door and many talks about the constant competitiveness and that's about personal tax rates or the cost of infrastructure etc etc but Irish firms where does this take us next but this is our Whittaker moment the next 60 years we can either regard the Brexit piece as the latest thing we can allow and it's clearly much bigger than that but the context in which we address it leads to be thought of as a much longer term opportunity for this economy to go to the next and create something but to naturally go forward we think back to Whittaker in the last time with prior collaboration for people who had significantly less certainty than we have now and almost no resources compared to the huge resources that we have we should be thinking about this as the first step and saying what do you want your kids to say it's 60 years time or our grandchildren say it's 60 years time and other choices that we have to put but this is a game change how we act and how we respond to it and to find out it's for two generations to come Ian you worked before the aviation industry in retail sectors so you probably have a pretty good sense of smaller entities and the opportunities to create something I did get and taking it back to the our particular point in terms of tourism tourism is the ultimate destiny if you go down and if you go outside the main cities you don't have to go all the way and so on we have small towns going to our hotels and restaurants small businesses where the people don't even know what it is so our college in terms of brexit lets remember 14% of our business to come from the UK it's treated to all parts of our economy it catches a cold our climate it catches a cold it catches a cold in parts of the UK and so we're saying just we can find that to protect the future as we talked earlier about presentation SMEs sex international if they provide the backwards which is the answer will determine what will become of the brexit will be successful yes I'm certainly from I think there's a huge challenge for our SME sector again looking at what's been touched on in the previous panel in terms of the the agriculture sector that makes up so much of our SME business here the challenge that that sector in terms of exports to the UK which we do so much of where for the first time in 40 years there are going to be customs barriers of some description whether those customs barriers are involved in tariffs actual tariffs which we probably have to plan for that but even without tariffs the non-tariff barriers that will be there will be huge for that sector to cope with so just somebody exporting their product from here to the UK having to go through all of the paperwork which cannot be underestimated and the cost of doing that paperwork we had a client actually a discussion with a client who would be a medium-sized food processor shipping about 50 odd containers of product to the UK on a weekly basis and the estimate and this is not an estimate of tariffs this estimate of just additional cost from filling in the paper getting agents, customs agents and all the rest the additional annual cost for that business was somewhere in the region 250 to 300,000 euro per year and that's what business is already operating on pretty well within margins so that alone is huge and the problem that we do fix is that we actually don't have enough customs related expertise in this country to help SMEs and others with that sort with that sort of challenge but we need more I can sense a sense of frustration a sense of frustration but not taking the point of that trade and not taking this clinic on Enterprise Ireland announced just 10 days ago annual strategy which is strategies to consider a grant aid to help us arrange traditional clean businesses is that the need to be done? it's the right thing to say the idea of 500 billion consumers revealed preference we've had 500 billion consumers available for quite some time revealed preference in the trade with the 6B1 that's quality our options the one thing I said about the one size of it is if you do the following experiment that this was unified Ireland so you actually had a nice, neat Ireland on the stage there isn't a snowball chance you can think about that and then in that regard when you move on from that how are we going to ensure that given what we find ourselves in the business community a predominant business relationship and so we wouldn't be actually diplomatically looking for a north-south solution we'd be crying for a force majeure problem for a small island of a G7 country that would make this very dramatic decision and therefore we're looking for relief from rules around state aid fiscal and a push for a common cause of the incorporation tax base on the agenda and the narrative of back into our EU 27 partners is if Ireland loses the investment that is in the EU at the moment that doesn't need the EU 26 there's quite a significant amount of that in Ireland the next port of call will be able to go to Britain and therefore avoid definition out of the EU Ireland is not just looking for this investment for Ireland it is actually where the investment comes any way that thinks that the decision to come to Ireland is a pure EU 26 access play is very much mistaken when it comes to some of that state aid because the Canadian Highway this is certainly the turn of this year being trying to stimulate government into the economy looking for state aid holding certainly in certain sectors there may be only a food and housing issue but I don't think that's but state aid is sort of topic of the month obviously given the recent experience with with Apple here for example but also in other countries as well Amazon, the Star Ops and so forth and I don't I honestly don't know what the chance of success is with regard to state aid already I think that to some extent that might depend on what the UK goes the UK has said well we will be free of the shackles of the EU and the constraints of the EU as far as it is in turn but having said that the UK will even in a worst case scenario will still be subject to will be subject to WTO rules and even filled in within those rules there are certain state aid and type things there will still be some constraint not nearly as much as would be applied by the EU so having some sort of holiday would be great but I just don't know exactly what I'm talking about it's not even a holiday really for us we use our own money it's actually more about fiscal rules I'm not sure who I was necessarily going to be talking about I think it's actually getting to the core of what we're talking about is the fact that this is of course an issue right for us because everything in this room has said that Brexit would be negative and we want to stay in the EU 27 but the question now is what is facilitated to allow us as a society we don't face the same threats coming forward what will the threats be we can threaten the EU we're more small but if we work on the basis that part of the EU 27 which I hear a lot of people saying that we really are valued well we're putting up our hands to say this is of course majority and let's not get distracted by the North-South piece it's the East-West dimension as the most dominant problem for Irish business the North-South isn't the issue for a business but it's a problem where the Irish government absolutely being told that we will be heard and heard most sympathetically but we will be heard in and therefore we won't have to try to see holidays on the door to the system or support or whatever to the use of existing EU worlds there's two possible ways one is to say we invoke a serious disturbance to the Irish economy the other two is you are trying to say why don't you start collecting some more terrible taxes why don't you start raising your which idea of your view we have to be a little bit current but I would say if your thoughts in relation to this you mentioned the common travel area and I think that deserves a little bit of air time everyone preaches that we want to retain the common travel area we haven't really debated what that means or what the risks are to that so in broad English the common travel area when you drive to Europe you're availing of the common travel area but you're going to a channel that says UK channelised domestic traffic so it would be a different channel than French people and so your passport is not checked on entry to the UK except for terrorism so all your countries, the EU 22 of the rest of the countries in the EU have what's called shame there that's their version of the common travel area where you're driving between the two and so if you google what Theresa May has said that she wants to achieve she wants to take back control of our borders and so that's ill-defined is what that precisely means in relation to the common travel area in relation to our options and in relation to the tension in Schengen and we bother in legislation that we have a visa way for recognition scheme with the UK that if a Chinese visitor flies in to Dublin and goes to the truth in college and then flies on to London we co-recognise their visas and so when you say unilaterally as Theresa May is taking back control of our borders that throws all of that out of the air and at the very least let's say your process which now at the moment is a way to pass, way to pass, way to pass comes a three-minute check or a five-minute check or US Aircrafts and Minerals so the whole thing about taking back control of our borders Schengen, visa waivers that's what that means because she needs to be examined Do you have any questions on the options services industry? Yes I think the answer is yes I was going to say it depends on what the finance model is let's look at business setting up business is currently in the UK setting up some sort of presence here a lot of talk is that obviously there are going to be people here but of course that infrastructure that has existed for so many years in the UK and it's huge and business has sunk millions and billions of pounds into that infrastructure is still going to exist so it's still going to be that very close link but in a practical sense that also means that there will be people going to and from between Dublin and London in order to transact the financial services business that will be located here whatever that is and of course the attractiveness of what we have at the moment as far as facilitating that business is concerned will be severely diminished if the common travel area is impacted as I was suggesting The common travel area has existed since the foundation that I'm pre-studying but it's never been legislated before it's not even binding and most people don't know that or appreciate that it relies on cooperation out of the minister of arrangements between the Irish and the UK authorities yes it's mentioned in the common protocols and the deal with the treaties and yes it's been published in the gentleman's statement but we may have to see a situation where consent of other legal member states is given to a continuation of this agreement John the context of British-Irish trade relations are you hearing the common travel area as an issue or is it something you would decide that turns to John on the wider question of when are we going to have a conversation about the causes of what's happening so if you want to take the X centre of the referendum that it was the piece about the UK's immigration and the European Union it is quite scandalous that there hasn't been a conversation about the free movement since the 23rd of June and about the consequences of all that for everybody it's up a surgeon for us we are highly exposed to the consequences of Britain not coming to some arrangement on the free movement and Britain itself, the UK itself whose economy may be a little tank by the way because we don't talk about what's going on it's like at the moment of all the consequences of Britain the idea that this is where I would say we have 60 million people you know what, in order to stop people from migrating into our land we go off and have dealings with the countries and why it's happening today it's just preposterous but that's to become the narrative here we have to go back to having a conversation and what basically the EU and all of us come to terms with the importance of free movement but the real world fact that has to be managed in some way and of course the EU has lots of precedents of managed free movement take Belgium for instance all of us, our citizens we've moved to Belgium tonight we have the right to move us as European citizens but some people might like to remind us in three months time that we have a job like that's managed free movement and there's been no conversation about this and there's been other periods of this to say how does the rest of the EU have to deal with this in practical terms and until we begin to do that we're running massive resistance on the UK's exit to all of our all of our existence here and just on the economy piece we've bought into the foreign exchange collapse piece but the far more worrying thing now was to climb into the EU people talk about inflation and the consumer of the 3% the plan of action is in place and that's been pent up and not passed on and the 75% of the hedging in place in Britain last June is still in place in Germany this year it's now going off the consequences that we've been in in three to six months time and this is being known as this we're going to have a significant higher education and that will lead to job losses because Britain is not exactly the most productive economy and when Britain hurts and this is a big worry but we have to get back to the conversation you were talking about John said at the beginning it's almost trade versus immigration security versus the EU well I suppose one of the dominant things and John has shown us in this quite some time is that our labour market is pretty much connected with the British labour one of that didn't feel like 16% of the employment rate but it would be much higher in terms of employment in terms of that time and professionally so we are very connected I myself am troubled by speculating what would happen if Brexit happened what would happen next I think it's actually happened faster because I would have said the day after a Brexit accident Britain would want single market access and then it would be able to find a lift and it would be able to do more DCJ all of that is happening really quickly with the intercourse of the Irish business nobody is going out in public airways and this only business leader joins any public debate and there's no there's no rational core to be adhering to but just listen to the business news I think about people spreading their bets it's the UK economy it's very stopped as an investment but it's actually a preservation so on the labour market I would have thought that one of the problems we've had in the business community on the 24th of June was we'd have to say as Ireland, that shared labour market that we too need to have controls over the migration to conflict or EU 26 comings as it's happened, as John's points the trade of investment things is actually comparatively much faster but underneath it's still an issue migration because these two islands have disproportionately experienced that movement and as business people it's been great it's been wonderful in terms of high productivity but people are running in the productive hours of the week 21, 8 hours seconds of the week you know, 5 of those it's 14 or a week in the workplace people live in a society sitting under units and to the rest of the population the infrastructure isn't building fast enough people will feel crowded out from the playground or from the school that's what's meant in the referendum and then if fiscal rules are the thing that stops you from taking resources you have and building that infrastructure fast enough we're heartling down for exactly the same by the referendum decision here if we don't wake up and if we don't appeal to that force measure or an issue that I've talked about and get this one size is not available there I think we're in conflict we're under EU 26 and I don't take a huge amount of suffering from the myth from the success of being pre-announced and then the pulsation but magically what you can also take from the diversity is that we're actually in war with the force one is trying to take us with them by saying you have a backdoor option here the others are saying that's fine, what about Spain and Gibraltar, what about Syracuse yes, we'll give you our I'm not sure what I'm established on actually saying our big problem is our big problem is going to be actually a political future which is known for its music we might have somebody with political affiliations as the managing partner but I would actually agree with Danny in that respect to be honest because if it was left to us we'd be doing all sorts of deals between the UK because it's our most natural trading partner and all this has been but we are going to be constrained by what we want with the UK by the EU and we've got a call to make about which club we really want to be in we're saying it is the EU at 27 but we're saying that we've got to take the consequences off which means that we won't do the deal so we're going to do it with the UK it's very interesting John we're entirely delighted that we've got a bunch of famous people far away from us so we have to manage three great relationships the EU, the UK and the US and we don't do too badly of that actually we somehow managed to be fostered if not more than born by the UK and the serious point is I think we're very well served by our officials and we surely need that it's not to take we're not going to go down at IRX in this discussion today but anybody in the room no matter our persuasions we caution against having a referendum about it any time soon what referendum well we do need to have a conversation that we're entitled to have about where is the European Union taking us and our membership in the camera and the settlement before Paris the shortest chapter and of course it won't be read anyway but the shortest chapter in that 17th age document of one age, century 4 and competitiveness was two thirds of the country before that's all we've got but the EU pledged itself to fostering greater competitiveness not least for its SMEs that was not sooner or later but it has been in their job I was given a presentation recently where we were talking about great and I had to step back and go to the start and say what is Britain actually the boss and that's an important point but you get immersed in the process and through the boss and it's a famous Monty Python that people know what are the Romans that would do for us and if you have to go back to Brass Tax and you have to go back to pre-73 to see that our road infrastructure was a mess our farming was impoverished our education systems got poor our standards of safety our standards of security and all of those were brought on by the EU project and what the EU has been particularly bothered to me is telling the people what it has been doing it is lousy to be off it's very good at other stuff as today we have to step back and enjoy the safety of things that the EU has brought on including the road network all of the free travel we talk about and that could get lost and then very I think that's it speaking across the way this morning you said that when Mrs May before I went to Canada spoke with the Chinese when the reports were back and written about what the Chinese said in response they admitted to saying that they were very happy to do the best in Germany because they want to invest in the European Union but I do slightly fear personally where the only Irish offerer has an office in Brussels who has been there since 1974 and we value that very much both for ourselves but also for what brings to Irish clients I would say I am extremely concerned if Irish industry let us on let's back back the EU 2016 I will find another multi-faceted movie where the United States let us cover if we ended up outside the European Union and became once again a tentatively satellite of the UK that would surely be disastrous I don't enjoy anybody seriously talking about that a lot I think we have to be we have to be completely secure in our ability to have a conversation but we see it absolutely with the EU membership as uniquely good it's no question and yet be able to say as fully paid up members committed to the future and the ideas as well as the operational effects to say we need to be part of the conversation and deliver in this context a competitive platform for business to prosper globally but also to take care of Ireland's order of connectivity to the UK and we don't have it shouldn't be that we have to make choice that might be quite a conversation that's not going to expose any kind of questions or comments on the floor John I'm rather surprised because they did have to raise taxes to give money to certain companies and Ireland when that was vetoed in the past Ireland would always lose everything we were not in a position to do so the great thing about the Selah market is it's outlawed in the United Kingdom and if you look at the recent issue of jobs that were completely non-policy the paper on the UK could do with this regard and the answer is the UK would demand to increase taxes in the United Kingdom so I really don't think there were any exceptions this is something that we want the same rules applied with respect to the United Kingdom for everybody in view from that point of view I think that's fine John as you're not in a 90% food business it's actually struggling with us today that has to make corporate decisions given that they aren't heard by state aid groups when they're observing other big competitors already actively exploring that in the way of the EU I think it's a nice idea but there isn't a broad structure with real businesses that are actually trying to compete right now in exchange for influence those rules are abiding I think again it's a tribute to the Irish people the Irish people they've made over a period of time serious disturbance to the Irish economy particularly in context and I think there's not a lot of exception that may well be some sort of guideline which wouldn't be unique to Irish but which we might qualify both in order to show the same the other possibility is the security and road practice but that only allows exceptions and today it's only for refugee situations John just on respect to which I was at for me the issue is that the matter of state aid is what's done with it and there's undoubtedly a shock to the system to say the very least if we go back to the pedigree piece we have a lot to do to position this country this society and this economy to be successful over the next number of decades and for instance there's just one other the food and business sector is uniquely exposed to education and really getting to a world-class parallel education system can help us to compete not just today but in the future as well at the simplest level I was with an EI client yesterday a very successful and very originally EI client who said that they were the only one in their sector who translates their work into Germany into Germany so that they could sell it in Germany at the most basic level we're still not teaching businesses and citizens just for the same 70-40 years on and we're definitely not addressing the running the store on the current level education it sells reports but we don't need any more reports we need to get a little bit of bravery to make decisions today and the shock to the economy needs some of the big macro factors to be addressed now and that leads us to a state aid or outstanding characters that spend some of their own money in general we're in the euro area sorry we're in the euro area which David Crom and Rembrandt are sort of committing and also in the institute we are in the euro area which makes our position somewhat less flexible down that of the UK in that we are going to be and are governed by certain rules and certain limitations to how we can respond to trade difficulties and it's likely that the EU are going to pursue as a priority the preservation of the euro area above even the euro area and how do we how do we break this game where the push is more likely to be towards a fiscal union or in that direction where we are still wanting to ensure that we preserve this east-western to the UK how do we balance that actually well in terms of fiscal union I suppose the practical output is the lives of the common consolidated tax base I think we probably fairly unanimously have railed against that I don't speak for everybody necessarily but most people railed against it because we have seen the benefit to Ireland of setting our own fiscal policy to the extent that we can that has been approved by the EU that's a policy that we've always done since Ireland became a pipe-work-facing economy back in the sort of mid-to-late 1950s with expulsions and all of that sort of stuff so I just think that it would be wrong for Ireland to accede to the common consolidated tax base no matter what because once we do that we are swallowed up within this landmass which we're not even physically a part of where the capital intensity on that landmass is far greater than we see here in Ireland and as I think Danny said very early on, here we are a little island off a G7 country and we just get lost so I think we just have to stand our ground on this and if it requires unanimity to get to that common consolidated tax base we can't give it and personally very clear on that and anybody who's spoken to in business would be very clear on that and if it goes ahead we then have cooperation well I think that's a mess I really think that it's just a really bad situation but I would do it Thank you I will draw a few forward members of the Parliament Member of the Institute if it could pick up that last point first I was one of the points I had here to ask was what exactly you were saying Danny about the common consolidated corporation tax base I didn't quite understand what you meant and I don't think it was what the last speaker has just said but I'm interested in your view on that and there has to be order posts on the perimeter of the EU of some description and somewhere any commentary here on whether it is a runner or whether it will be viable to have the EU UK order at the points on an all island basis in Ireland I wouldn't be interested in views to consider views of the experts here on that, I haven't mentioned it and I was actually listening to Tony Blair down in the regional hills of Utogo and even though he wouldn't be my political persuasion and would all refuse about his backstory in certain areas certainly on the EU raising issue he is assertive even now and as far as he's concerned it's not all over yet I found that hard to understand initially but when we listened to him for 45 or 50 minutes developing it all he basically holds for a massive majority for Theresa May he didn't say it this way but effectively he was saying of a very adjourned call on the Labour Party now he did not say that but that would be the effect and that there will be such a political reaction which is bubbling there just beneath the surface that you would have another opposition party out quote-unquote I say that and rising from the ashes somewhere because a massive majority for Theresa May my very UK plan there and what's the political scenario in the UK after that in other words could you have an action reaction and could it actually get a proper debate going on what the electorate had actually voted for and I just would be interested in your views on that the final point is nobody mentioned the great repeal of it here today I was hoping somebody would raise that because I can't quite make up my mind whether it is a pragmatic solution and it's practical or it is a recipe for chaos apart from accepting I was a fox to the British electorate 44 years member of the EEC and the EU 24,000 bits of legislation later and it's all about what we wrote to the great repeal of it for the next 30 or 40 or 50 years some dumped, some amended and some accepted what's that all about and what does it mean for us thank you the corporation obvious that the shareholders of corporations so that's the game so it's all about the money and so the triple CTV can consistently allow you to have sovereignty over your corporate tax rate what to actually grab and redistribute the money in that regard looking at the formulas that we've done the work on at least 50% of the Irish corporate tax revenue in play at the moment so circa this year around 8 billion corporate tax revenue will be a 4 billion handoff in the future if the Irish citizens actually go through the scenario that we find would last be collected in other taxes attitude will change towards the triple CTV I have nothing against the triple CTV as a point of principle for businesses if it worked it was a choice it makes sense for businesses to actually have a common system of corporation tax but as a citizen of Ireland this is a big factor that would be very brave for us to monitor the other point was if you've got sovereignty over corporate tax rate I believe I'm actually starting that Britain is going to go down into the same zone as Ireland on the whole ratio tax rate and it will happen very quickly and I would like for people to know more than I the following scenario is if the Britain is out of the EU you don't have to have a single corporation tax rate that's an EU requirement it may cause human crime between the retailers of Britain versus whoever they want to favour a different lower rate but a society that's sovereign can actually cherry pick and get right into the heart and if you want to have evidence Britain already did in the last decade it was called the Kate Lincoln box it was deliberately designed in that regard and so on the border yeah so I said to Tom that anything can happen and ideas that seemed fanciful barely a few months ago suddenly gained a bit of traction all the way and where the border might be definitely in that box of tricks and I would refer to Adam Allenture running the airport but I'm always taken by the idea that when I play to London there's a deal every week I can walk off the concourse get on to the tune I can be down in Oxford Street and I'm always asked for brilliant information but I fly home the following night and I'm sure they'll ask me to put in there but I take the care of the areas I do from time to time I have to use my documents so we get a little bit kind of woolly in that space the real issue is where trade positions and evidence might be closed and of course there's a flaw of living and stuff like that I think the new dimension is the acknowledgement that there's something about Ireland and it's called Northern Ireland and therefore where the border actually is around Northern Ireland becomes extremely important but for most of farmers wait up and find that their economy they may change their view of where they take the border just very quickly I will return to the border you know the question is whether the political challenge is to control that border and both were closed the British were only able to control the border it was so forced so we're fooling ourselves if we believe that border can be controlled with a motorway that just drives straight there is a reason for what you're talking about you're probably aware that in the Second World War it was absolutely difficult to control the border but border control points between Northern Ireland were on the scene and so there's a political challenge at that point I would say if you were to agree with people because it's a British and a Croatian business they didn't have the ability to deal with the catastrophe so they're trying to leave and introduce all the same legislation that they have with the Union on day one and as you say other periods of time they will remain unchanged and that's called arbitration one gentleman says have a very short time but it's a short question I moved and the trustee has a difficult is there anything else? so thank you my name is not a watchable member of the institution I am not only depressed I am completely annoyed that I'm trustee told me during this session on the area session and I remember back to the good old days when we entered the EEC it's a question not a speech yes it is I've been short already thanks for the introduction I remember back to the when we joined the EEC we were told it would be a marvelous opportunity to diversify away from the British market now that obviously has not happened and we are seeing all these rabbits staring into headlights now so what has happened that remarkable opportunity back in the early 70s when we were supposed to be diversifying away from the British market we obviously haven't done that but I think thank you very much for that question I suspect that most people who disagree with our analysis would believe that that is what we need can I apologize in regards and Jim McDonnell, Neil McCartney and that is all thank you