 I would like to particularly acknowledge the support and the interest of the government, particularly the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Charlie Flanagan that we just heard from, and the role that the British Irish Chamber of Commerce is also playing in the debate, and as the minister said, we all have a role to play and we should care about this because it is something that's going to fundamentally affect our lives if the vote goes the wrong way. And as Brendan very eloquently put it, we have a lot to lose as a country, a huge amount to lose, and all of us should care about that. The focus of this particular panel is on the implications for UK business of a vote by Britain to leave the European Union. The panel that follows will focus on the implications for Irish business. So it's my pleasure to welcome the panel. They have together extensive combined experience in financial services and banking, retail, manufacturing, real estate with significant exposure to the British economy. So I'll start with the gentleman to my left, Patrick O'Sullivan. Patrick is Chairman of Old Mutual since January 2010. Old Mutual operates primarily in the long-term savings and investment market. From 2007 to 2009 Patrick was Vice-Chairman of Zurich Financial Services, where he had specific responsibility for its international businesses including South Africa. Prior to that he was CFO of the ZFS Group and CEO of Eagle Star Insurance. He's held many positions in institutions such as Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Financial Guarantee, and also previously Chairman of the UK Shareholder Executive and Deputy Governor of our own Bank of Ireland. In addition to Old Mutual he serves as Chairman of Equity Syndicate Management, which is part of the Lloyd's Syndicate. To Patrick's left we have Richard Pym, the Non-Execut Chairman of AIB who took up the role in December 2014. Richard is a chartered accountant with extensive experience in financial services, having held a number of senior roles including Group Chief Executive Officer of Alliance and Leicester in the UK. Richard is also Chairman of UK Asset Resolution Limited, which is the entity which manages on behalf of the UK government the runoff of the government-owned closed mortgage books of Bradford and Bingley in the UK. Richard also previously held the chairmanship of the Co-operative Bank in the UK, Bradford Group, Haldford's and as a former Non-Execut director of the British Land Company, Old Mutual itself and Selfridges. Finally on my left, far left, I have Owen Brennan. Owen is a graduate of UCD Agricultural Science and later graduated with a Masters in 1992. In 1997, 15 years ago, Owen led a team to acquire a business called Devanish, which is a leader in developing and offering nutritional solutions to the challenges faced by livestock producers and owners of companion and leisure animals. Owen has seen an overseen a rapid expansion of his business in those years. Devanish is now the largest independently owned manufacturer of premix, creep and specialty feed products in the UK. That group has six manufacturing sites across the UK Ireland and US, so significant exposure to the UK and is well placed to give us an opinion from the point of view of the manufacturing impact on manufacturers. The format for this morning's session is I'm going to ask each of the panellists to make some brief remarks on their thoughts on the situation that is before us. Then I will conduct a Q&A with the panellists and towards the end I will open it to the floor. If any questions will take questions at the end. So I will ask without further ado Patrick to lead off with some remarks. Thank you. Thank you very. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Great pleasure to be back in Dublin. I said to Richard just before I started, I'll act as a proxy for him, a nourishment in the UK and he can act as a proxy for me, an Englishman in Ireland. So we'll carry on on that basis and what I try to give you is a sense of how it's viewed from where we sit in London today. As Brendan said earlier, Brexit is a real possibility. In fact probably that was the best treatise I've seen on what happens after it all goes pear shaped. But the poll of polls as of yesterday, as of last night had it 50-50, which is some indication of the uncertainty. I know we're five weeks away and so on, but nonetheless 50-50 is very worrying. Secondly, when you look at the bookies, the bookies of course are at 70% for remaining in, 30%, but they both got it wrong at the election only a year ago. So who do you trust and which ones, who do we go with? So in that context, what are the facts that are being promulgated to the average British or even United Kingdom voter today? And surprisingly by the way that Northern Ireland looks like the Unionists would like to leave, but I can't understand that at all given the support for agriculture up there. However, if you look at it, people are trying to hang it around a number of facts. The Single European Act would you rather be a member of a market that and have prospects for jobs in a 50 million person market or a 500 million person market, the biggest market in the world in terms of numbers of people. If you listen to Caroline McCall, who's the CEO of EasyJet, airfares across Europe have been reduced by anything from 40% to 180% ever since the freedom of the skies was granted to her and to Michael O'Leary. In our area in financial services, the what's called and known as MIFID regulations markets in financial investments directive means that if you're buying a product in Dublin or London or Slough or Birmingham, you have the same information as if you are living in Munich in Frankfurt or wherever buying that product. So we all know that we're buying into what can be trusted as well regulated products for investment savings, life insurance and so on. Just recently you'll have noticed that the roaming charges on mobile phones have dropped from 19 cents to 5 cents, a huge drop. So now you can travel across Europe and not be worried about huge bills when you get back home. For lots of those of us who have to work 70 hours a week, the next one is not so popular, but the working time directive made sure that in 1998 workers were being treated equally so there's no unfair or uneven playing field across Europe in terms of competition from the point of view of productivity and so on. However, none of this really, really resonates with the population. The average man or woman on the street of Britain today doesn't really understand the arguments. The cost to leave, for example, the Treasury, which is the Richard and I know very well for working for them, the Treasury is one of the smartest groups, a bunch of people outside the Bank of England in the country. So they announced that you're going to be £4,500 worse off by 2030 if we leave. But what they then admit two weeks later on the Today program, which is the morning news program on Radio 4, is that actually it's not worse off, you'll be less well off by 4,500, whatever it is, if we pull out of the EU. You'll still do better, but you won't do as well. The Dutch ambassador to the European Court, I was about to say, maybe it is when people view it and that's part of the problem as a bureaucracy and untouchable. The Dutch ambassador to the European Parliament said at a city UK meeting three months ago that the real danger here is, and the minister I think referred to it in fact, and he referenced Ireland as well because the Dutch, the Irish, the Swiss are great at referendums. He said, be careful because people don't vote for the issue. They vote for what concerns them at the time. And this morning, as I left the UK this morning, the headlines are full of Cameron lied on his ability to control immigration of Europeans into the UK. The usual press kind of reaction, but unfortunately the garbage press seems to be winning the arguments. And then if you look at behind the polls, and here is the real danger, and I spoke on Tuesday morning to the individual running the Remain campaign, two thirds of people of my generation want to come out. That's inexplicable. How can you think the post war generation of Britain can't see the benefits of the peace and the dividends that have been paid and having a quiet Europe for the last 70 years? Two thirds of over 60s want to come out. Now on the other hand, two thirds of young people under the age of 35 want to remain in. But where will 300,000 of those be on the first, on the day of vote at Glastonbury? They won't be voting. So his view is that if we have a low turnout, and this has already been referenced, we will lose. The Remain campaign will lose. Because it's people like me who have the time to vote, and the willingness to vote. If it's over 60%, we'll win. So your guess is as good as mine. Well, Patrick, thank you very much for those remarks. Owen, it might turn to you as the executive chairman of a Northern Ireland manufacturing business with significant international exposure particularly to Britain. Maybe give us your thoughts on Brexit. Good morning everybody. And just to start by saying that I commend Barry and his team and the IEA for hosting this event. I think it's important. Listening to Brendan Halligan present and Brendan has a team behind him led by Tom Arnold. You can see, I hope, why I think it's important. And why I commend the people concerned for cutting this out here. I am very concerned about this, which is another reason that I'm here. And I suppose 35 days is better than 3 days to go to be having this conversation. Just a little about ourselves. We're an agri-technology company working in the animal feed and food industry. We're headquartered in Belfast, as mentioned. We also have our largest manufacturing point in Belfast. Four others in England, two in the US, a distribution centre in Mexico, and a sales office in the UAE. We focus on innovation in our business. To put that into perspective, we spent 30 million pounds in our last financial year on innovation projects. So it's a big subject for us. Our business has grown substantially, as Barry mentioned. When we got involved in 97, we had a turnover of 5 million pounds. 95% of those sales were in Northern Ireland. 23 people employed. Today we sell 170 million. We employ over 500 people. We have 24 nationalities represented on our staff and we sell into 25 countries. And also just to mention that while sales into Northern Ireland now represent 10% of our total, that's over three and a half times the figure we inherited in 97. So it remains a very important market for us. We were fortunate as a company recently to win the Queen's Award for Export Achievement, of which we're very proud. On another note, but something of which we're equally proud, is our development of a new feed mill and model farm in a place called Haimau in Uganda, in partnership with the Irish Government. And our focus there is on helping local farmers to turn from subsistence to commercial, in other words to help them to help themselves. And I commend the Irish Government for their interest and support of projects of this nature. The ideal of helping people to help themselves through business. The implications for business if the UK were to leave the EU I believe would be significant, adverse and would include in my opinion a reduction in market access. And I believe that would be both within the EU and in the wider global market. Secondly, it would increase business and economic uncertainty, and therefore risk and one of the fundamental tasks of people in businesses to manage risk. It's not something we welcome. Thirdly, we believe it would reduce feed and food sector income. And fourthly and possibly more importantly bring on for scene and unintended negative consequences. What do I mean? By way of two practical examples I thought I would just mention the recent Scottish referendum and something that's quite important in my sector of food, the recent ending of the EU milk quarter regime. Who first saw the collapse in oil prices, agricultural prices when Scotland was campaigning for independence? If that campaign had succeeded how would Scotland stand today? Who first saw when milk quotas ended after 30 years what is now described as the perfect storm in milk markets globally which is as we speak having really serious and again adverse consequences? I believe a UK exit from the EU would put both of those issues into a very small place. It is obviously a much, much bigger issue. So what might the consequences that are not yet contemplated and I believe there are a lot of consequences not yet contemplated which would ensue? Fundamental change at this level even if it's well founded and I don't believe a UK exit from the EU would be well founded is inherently unpredictable and therefore very risky. In conclusion could I give you a small example from my business experience which illustrates for me the nub of what I see before us. In 1986 I first did business in the US buying at the time some machinery. One of my potential suppliers at an early stage in our conversation pointed out that he had not come to talk about what his machinery could not do but rather what it could do. 30 years later I continued to think that man was right to take that approach. What really matters is what people and things can do. Who here can remember being told at an early stage in Brian O'Driscoll's career that he couldn't kick how ludicrous an assessment was that? It seems to me that those who wish the UK to leave the EU are intelligent and telling us what the EU can't do. I am much more interested in what it can do. As someone who has spent many years developing business I believe the EU can do, has done and will continue to do a great deal of hugely positive things. Examples would include enormous improvements in market access, hugely increased availability and much reduced cost of air travel and telecommunications, practical things that make an enormous difference and the harmonisation of regulations across markets. These have all been of huge benefit to business and to all people in the UK and Europe generally. Finally, I have concentrated on my remarks on business implications given that I am just a simple businessman makes this perhaps unsurprising. It wasn't however a business point that has made the greatest impression on me in this debate to date. It was to be reminded that the driving idea and ideal in the foundation of the Union was peace. Europe having endured two disastrous wars in a little over 30 years. As someone who travels the world frequently and has seen the catastrophic impact that lack of peace will bring, I continue to think this founding idea and ideal is as important in the 21st century as it ever was in the 20th. And perhaps more so. Thank you for your attention and I would be pleased to take any questions that you may have at the end of our session. Thank you very much. I think it's interesting that you focus on the benefits which I think many of us in the room would agree with and would support. I guess I will discuss it in the Q&A as to how do you convey to the British electorate the messages that the benefits bring and it is proving a difficulty. We will come on to that. Our final speaker is Richard Pym. Richard has had huge experience in the UK financial services industry as I mentioned earlier, but he has also had the added benefit of being chairman of one of our pillar banks, AIB, for the last two years. So has had unique insights to the operation of the UK market and the economy and the Irish market. So I think Richard will talk about something similar to Brendan and then the appalling prospect that awaits us if this happens in June. So I will hand you over to Richard. Thank you, Barry. I am used when I have just asked to make some comments on Brexit to being the most miserable person in the room. Brendan, you get that prize. I mean, any prospect of getting new trade agreements within two years is fanciful. If you think that the Greenland treaties a few years ago, they took three years. Greenland has a population of just over 50,000 people. I think there were major concerns on the few million of fish who also had rights and the whole thing, but the thought that United Kingdom could renegotiate all its agreement for the European Union within two years period is absolutely fanciful. The other major barrier to negotiating these trade agreements is, of course, United Kingdom does not employ anyone who has ever negotiated a trade agreement because we have not negotiated a trade agreement for the best part of half a century. So, whilst British civil servants are extremely, as Patrick referred to, extremely bright, flexible, put a shift in, they are not going to be able to agree new trade agreements because they will be up against in the EU, some of the most experienced trade negotiators in the world. I mean, they have been negotiating with the US for the last decade, so they have been well trained and our guys will be on their induction programme dealing with the most aggressive trade negotiators in the world. So, the position of negotiating those agreements is extremely serious. And you start with the Brexit campaign who, if Britain leaves, will be in charge of these negotiations. And I heard one of these guys on the radio the other day. He talked about this new agreement that Britain would have with the EU, which would be fair to the EU but advantageous to the UK. That was the way he was going into these negotiations at the point that Britain has stopped paying its net 10 billion euro contribution when, of course, goodwill would just be flowing to the UK, won't it not? So, let me just put this into sort of two vague parts. We just have to start with the financial markets effect. And Brendan alluded to this. What happens on Friday, June the 24th? Well, if Britain leaves, it will be an absolutely ghastly day because Britain will have determined to worsen its trade with its major trading partner without having any offsetting benefit. Look at the economic fundamentals of the UK. There is a large government spending deficit way outside in the eurozone acceptable level. The United Kingdom hasn't shaved its deficit to the same extent as Ireland has. There's a huge trade deficit. The quarter one results that came out a couple of weeks ago, £13 billion of trade deficit in the first quarter. Now, there has been a partially offsetting surplus on services, the service sector, but of course that's about to be decimated by exclusion from the single market. So the markets will judge all of that extremely harshly. Now, the Bank of England has got its contingency plans to deal with the immediate effect in terms of the repo market and stuff like that. So the ATMs will continue to function. They'll be filled. They'll be liquidity in the banking system. The economy will function. But the external balances are the problem. That is where sterling will fall against the euro on our AIB website where we have a Brexit microsite. We talk about a messy Brexit scenario at 90 pence to the euro. There's a stock-broken firm just around the corner where their economist thinks parity with the euro. So obviously the effect on Irish exporters at that point is extremely painful. But in those immediate after effects, it could be the footsie is more stable because a lot of the footsie hundred index is actually dollar income, euro income. So it could be the footsie. People could say the footsie is holding up well. It's only because on the conversion into sterling there's an arbitrage of the worst. So this will be an absolutely ghastly day on the markets. So what will be the effect on the... Let's look first at the financial services industry. Now HM Treasury, the British Finance Ministry, produced some analysis a week ago, two weeks ago, that 33% of UK financial services exports go to the EU and that directly involves 100,000 jobs. That will be lost outside the single market. So 100,000 jobs is the estimate of loss in the financial services sector alone outside the single market. And then with the indirect job losses that go with that, that will be a quarter of a million. That's mainly focused in London. That will have a serious knock-on effect in all sorts of areas, but obviously most directly and immediately into the housing market. But I think there's a much wider perspective in that the European Union will not permit its main financial centre to be outside the European Union. Why would you allow your financial centre to be outside your control? Now the EU will create barriers to the city of London. It has always been envied particularly by the citizens of Paris and this is really their chance to put a knife in and to kill the city of London. And they will do it with glee. Now the Brexit campaign envisages London becoming a main offshore financial services centre like Singapore and Hong Kong, but it will not employ the type of jobs it employs now. The London financial areas that will thrive outside the EU and these are the guys who are backing Brexit are those who will benefit from lighter regulations. So that's the hedge funds and the traders. They're coming out in favour of Brexit. But of course they might not be able to find any counterparties in the market. Now if you look at the European Union at the moment the majority of large scale financial transactions are written under English law and that has been extremely good for employment for the large London law firms. So I really don't think that the European Union is going to permit its financial institutions to write their main financial contracts under the law of this sort of renegade offshore country. This pirate nation that's outside the European Union would you as the regulator allow that country's laws to be the arbiter of your financial system. I think that's highly unlikely. Who will write securitisations under English law other than British banks? My family will be one of the major impacts that very large London sector commercial law practices that will really be hit and I think they'll immediately slow their graduate recruitment. Because Ireland might be a long term beneficiary of that but obviously there's a short term pain before some possible medium term gain. But then there's the wider implication we're asked to talk about British business that's just beyond financial services. That British manufacturers will now be trading into the European Union having to comply with regulations that they've had no opportunity to influence. And effectively the European Union regulations will dominate British manufacturing because that's where all the goods go. So all this European regulation that the British public resent will still be applied in the United Kingdom. They just won't have any opportunity to influence it. So it is absolutely the worst of all worlds. And with less than 10% of EU trade being with the UK and then around 45% of British trade, external trade being with the EU then itself evidently the negotiating position is extremely weak. I think this takes us back to thoughts of Ireland prior to 1973 where when I hear tales of ministers going to London for whatever would fall off the table and we know that small countries negotiating with big countries in trade agreements don't tend to do very well. So in the absence of any trade agreement of course the WTO tariffs will apply. And something that Brendan didn't comment on but was an issue in the British referendum in 1975. Remember Britain joined in 1973 and then had a referendum to leave in 1975. Really enthusiastic right at the beginning. And in that campaign as I read up about it it was that when would the British payments the EU stop after referendum and it was immediate so I think after a referendum to leave there will be immediate political pressure for Britain to stop its payments it's 10 billion euro into the European coffers and at that event of course Britain's just excluded because walks away and WTO tariffs apply. Now as the minister referred to we have over 1 billion euros of trade between the two countries each week and there will be a big reduction or big dislocation to that trade anyway and position in Northern Ireland will be complex. Patrick referred to in Northern Ireland the agricultural sector. Let me just give you a flavour of some of the British campaign that I'm hearing in my ears. There I hear the chairman of UKIP campaigning in the west of England where I come from he was on TV station in Plymouth talking about the 6 billion euros that Britain trade puts into the EU agricultural fund but only gets 3 billion out and therefore we could double agricultural subsidies. That is the proposition to farmers. You will get double the money you get at the moment with Britain outside the European Union and that's why Northern Ireland farmers might vote if they believe that. By the way this 10 billion has been spent 2 or 3 times over in various promises hospital schools, universities, everything you wouldn't believe it and of course the common travel area becomes extremely difficult and can't go back to the form it was before. Now let's just then continue that theme if Britain is in the world trade having to comply with WTO tariffs to the European Union there's an immediate impact on British retailers trading with Ireland in that when you distribute from a British warehouse to all these British retailers in Ireland then the cages come off the trucks and are put straight on the shelves. With Britain outside then of course British retailers can comply with EU tariffs and will therefore have to identify by country of origin every single item that is in those cages. There will not be free trade where a cage can be loaded in Telford and shipped to some of the Dublin stores and you'll have that every item by country of origin and that is going to dramatically change the economics for British retailers of trading in Ireland and potentially change the landscape of Irish retail parks and high streets because it will become less economic for British retailers to trade. And then of course there's the overall effect of investment in business when the terms of trade are uncertain. The domestic economy slowed in the first quarter and that was undoubtedly the effects of Brexit. Now Britain has to be seen to lose when it leaves the EU. An EU diplomat put it if you're not at the table you're on the menu. I leave it there Barry.