 Thank you very much to our panel for some very interesting ideas and a wide range of ideas. I should say, by the way, I should have said at the beginning, I'm sitting in for Ambrose Lachlan of McCann Fitzgerald, who can't be with us today. He was supposed to chair the session, but he's taken ill. I'm not too seriously, I hope, but we wish him well. And I also want to thank McCann Fitzgerald for the support for this conference. We don't have an awful lot of time. We only have until about one o'clock, so I'm proposing to open up now immediately to questions and comments from the floor. And if you'd like to say something or like to ask a question, if you just indicate who you are at the beginning. Thank you. Yes, gentlemen here. Just hold on for a moment for a microphone. Pat McArdle, member of the Institute. This is a question for Susan Dargan. I always, like many, I always took the view that one of the benefits would be some inflows and FDI into what we used to call the Custom House area. But I was surprised recently at a meeting of economists to be told this was the last thing we needed. So my question for you is, has the IFSC infrastructure the capacity to cope with additional people coming in, whether that's in terms of office accommodation, whether it's in terms of staff with suitable qualifications, or indeed housing for the people who might move here? Yeah, and I would say that if there is a Brexit, we need to have the environment to be able to cope with that potential inflow. And Ireland is being viewed as an alternate. We're never going to be able to take the million of people who currently operate within financial services into Ireland. We have the infrastructure there, I would say, but we would need to significantly ramp up. So for instance, FSI has introduced an apprenticeship program more recently with NCI. We're talking about a thousand people going through that over a number of years. You would have to ramp up that type of activity significantly. You would have to have an environment which would be conducive to people relocating to Ireland as well. So that covers tax, education, regulatory environment and the capacity within the regulator to take on the increased activity. But having said that, Ireland is credibly being looked at as an alternate. Thank you, Susan. Gentleman over here. Thank you, Chair. My name is Bob Hannah. I'm with the Department of Energy. At least that's what it's called today. It'll be different tomorrow. That's a question for Brendan. Brendan, you correctly mentioned the single electricity market as something that would be affected by Brexit. And you're quite right, because 2.5 billion market will be seriously impacted. And our intelligence is that the powers that be in Northern Ireland would vote to change the market structure to align with the market structure in Britain should UK leave. Now, it's a different market. It's a bilateral contract market. We have operated at a very efficient pool market since 2007, so we are very concerned. My question to you is, how does this play out in terms of the impact on the transition to the integrated European single electricity market should the UK vote to leave? I reminded earlier there's a great phrase that's sometimes used in QI, if you know that programme, when it pertains to certain questions and the answer is nobody knows. So I think a lot of the questions today, I mean, that's the answer, nobody knows. I think if you look at it from a European point of view, it makes huge sense right across Europe to move to regional markets and then to a full European market. So that's the general trend and if you look at what's happening in the UK at the moment, they have gone from effectively an island market like our own with very little interconnection to a market that is now taking on a number of interconnectors. So security of supply I think is something that's fundamental to all markets because no modern society today can work without electricity and won't be able to in the future. So the devastation that is caused or that could be caused by any break into the future in relation to that is unparalleled by anything else other than war in my opinion. There's been a huge move right across Europe since Mr Putin has started flexing his muscles over the last 10 years to push that up the agenda in relation to a target for each European state and then at a regional level and then overall to become a less dependent and more integrated. So I don't know whether it makes sense to follow that the north of Ireland would head back into the UK. If I look at the political parties in the north, I mean the comment was made that the Unionists are in favour of Brexit. My reading of that would be the DUP are the only party that's in favour of Brexit. They represent 30% of the voting public, 70% are represented by all the other parties. And even speaking to the DUP unofficially, I think that's as much a political decision rather than they think it's going to happen. So I think they feel safe in voting against on the basis that they don't think it will happen in Northern Ireland. I think there is a deep view in the north that certainly on the farming side that they know where their bread is buttered and that they will follow that in terms of execution. And probably similar to down here at the moment and similar to the Department of Energy. The same is happening in the north at the moment in so far as the amount of departments are being lessened and being pulled together. They're still going through the process of who gets what in terms of dividing out the particular departments. And because of their political make-up in the north, I'm not sure that any one party can push a particular agenda, particularly if it's on a 70-30 basis to change things. So go back to my first statement, I don't know, but if I was to back a horse, I'd back the horse of the same saying the same. Thank you, gentlemen here. John Bradley, member of the Institute. My question is to John. The Irish enterprise sector is divided. One foreign is driven by a given set of global forces and the other is domestic and driven more by internal forces in these islands. Now you've painted a pretty dire scenario for the latter sector, which of course is the employment intensive sector. What, if anything, could be done after a Brexit to protect that sector? And if indeed it could not be protected, would it call into question Ireland's continued membership of the European Union? Thanks, John. So above all else, business is pragmatic. It's not ideological or political or anything else, and already some businesses are doing what you'd expect some businesses to do, is to begin to say, well, what if there was an impediment of any nature in the free-flowing trade that they have today? Bear in mind, the largest number of businesses on the island of Ireland today don't export at all, and that's often a statistic that's mentioned in regard to the hard-to-understand nature of what's going on in Britain today. 92% of British SMEs don't export at all. What we say is, but they know somebody who does. So nobody's immunized from the importance of the trade corridor between the two islands. For those who are thinking ahead, they'll say, how exposed am I? So if we take the farming argument and agribusiness argument and food processing argument, that has an extraordinarily high exposure because of the arguments that we set out earlier on in terms of potential tariffs. Against the proxy we know from in the nobody knows box, what does the World Trade Organization say might be the impediments and work back from that horror story? And there's no easy solution to that one. And as Howard has talked about, the idea that it's not just a price matter, it's that you're taking off the shelf that you spent 25 years trying to get on. So that's a huge concern in that sector. At the other end of the spectrum, if you're making widgets in Waterford, and you're selling them into Wellington or Winchester or somewhere else in the UK, that trade has been going on pretty well for a long time. You weigh up the opportunities and the threats just as you do all the time, and businesses are already beginning to think about pragmatic things like saying, well, do I need to get a base in the UK? And our good friends in Enterprise Ireland and UK Trade and Investment will roll out their extensive services to say, let's talk about the merits of you having a base inside the UK so that you're not in some way locked out, where you're not depending on a native resource like food production. And indeed, I might say the same applies in reverse to some of the points that have been made about opportunities and solutions for UK-based SME businesses in this case to talk about establishing here. And again, Enterprise Ireland and UKTI will help that case too. Do I think in the second part of... So that's a pragmatism answer, but tempered heavily by not taking any bit lightly the extreme exposure of certain sectors, and food would be one of those. I might also say tourism is another pretty exposed one. I mean, the Dublin-London air corridor is the second busiest in the world today, not just because of business visitors, second only to Hong Kong-type pay, by the way, and booming, including with our friends from Ryanair and others. Part of that is down to the success of the tourism economy. Part of that is down to the success of the exchange rate position over the last while. There are huge exposures in that, and that's a mom-and-pop industry the length and breadth of the country, you get all of that. Taking the second part of your question, is there a serious risk here that somebody is going to turn off or dial down our relative allegiance to the European Union? Might take a straw poll in the room. I personally and professionally doubt that very much. I think everybody on this island actually, but definitely in the Republic of Ireland, has a very high alertness to the benefits that we've got as a country, as citizens and as businesses, to the fact that European Union membership has delivered a hell of a lot for us. And I don't rule out a period of no more Mr. Nice Guy from the 24th of June onwards on a number of planes of this argument, but do I think that there's any material risk to our commitment to the European project? I don't. Thank you. The next question will have to be the last one because then we have to go to the next session. Yes, this gentleman here. Brian Sweeney, ex-Chairman of Siemens and Science Foundation Ireland. If I put the whole lot together, we've had a fantastic morning. And first of all, we scared ourselves into paralysis at the consequences of Brexit for Ireland and for the UK. Brendan showed us that to get out of the EU was enough to frighten anybody to stay into it, stay in there forever. But ultimately, this is going to be decided by the man in the street, the people who vote. And I feel I would have to conclude that there's a kind of a sense of inevitability that things are going to go against the people who want to stay in. And I feel there isn't enough oomph in driving the marketing process to convince the men in the street because the upper echelons, to kind of phrase, are convinced maybe to a greater extent. But this is going to be decided on votes. And do you harness the chambers of commerce, all the different bodies, apart from the employers individually, to really get after the voters, the people who will put their votes in the boxes to decide this issue? Because it's not funny. It's a fundamental, huge decision for the economies of the countries concerned and indeed for the political involvement. And that would be my prayer and wish that for God's sake, something has got to be done more than a kind of a lip service with a semi, a penumbra of defeatism, I would put it. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I think we'd all agree with that. I'll take one final question. Yes. Chairman Hulog, a member of the Institute. And perhaps this last question is unfairly to you, Chairman. You are a key member of implementing the Good Friday Agreement and the Belfast Agreement. And tangential to Brendan's question, where many things derive from the Good Friday Agreement, do you see political and economic implications directly related to the Good Friday Agreement coming from Brexit? I think a Brexit would be a disaster for Northern Ireland. Any reconstruction of the border, anything which would prevent or lessen the interconnection between people North and South would not be good for the people of the North and would not be good for the people of the South, in my view. I tend to agree with Blair Horan, as he said earlier on, that if there is a Brexit one way or another, there will be some reimposition of customs. And we all know what that takes, form-filling, business slows down, you're trying to get things to Britain, trying to get things to Northern Ireland. Anything like that which would bring a barrier, a land barrier between North and South, in my mind would be a disaster. And I really do feel fundamentally that the future of Northern Ireland exists in this very close cooperation between London and Dublin under the European umbrella. Should Britain leave that umbrella, I'm fearful. Can I ask you to thank our four speakers who have opened our minds up and led to a very simulating discussion. Thank you.