 I want to begin by saying that trade is good and has been extremely important in the success of the Irish economy as well as investment, which of course has underpinned much of the success especially in weathering the storms of recent recession. And I think the role of any trade agreement are indeed TTIP, which is much wider than a trade agreement in the normal sense of the term because it includes issues to do with non-trade barriers, but also complex rules and provisions in relation to investment and protection of investors. That in that context we need to be quite careful about the nature of what we're talking about, the evidence and the various risks and benefits associated with different aspects of this. And I think perhaps a little bit more dispassion is necessary here because there are strong arguments being made for TTIP by the European Commission, by member state governments in our own country. The various government departments are extremely enthusiastic about this and I think it's necessary to have a more informed, a more inclusive debate not only in our own parliament but in wider civil society. And I just want to make the point for information purposes because the Neven Economic Research Institute is funded by the trade unions. The Arge Congress of Trade Unions which represents ultimately 800,000 workers on the island of Ireland voted unanimously against TTIP at its July conference earlier this year. Furthermore the European Trade Union Confederation which is an umbrella of European Trade Union Federations has been very negative about TTIP although there have been some divergence of views across European trade unions but overwhelmingly the view is quite negative unless it be thought that this is somehow accrued anti-globalization or anti-American agenda the American AFL-CIO has also been very negative in relation to TTIP. So I think these are important facts that need to be taken into consideration and that we need to be able to address what are these concerns and why are people actually opposed in this case. It's not as if those bodies that I have mentioned are inherently anti-trade or anti-EU far from it but there is something about the nature and scope of TTIP the manner in which it has been conducted but also the range of issues covered in TTIP that is giving rise to concern. I just want to get straight to the key issue here which I think is the ISDS the investor-state dispute scheme and in a sense this is a new term in Ireland I suspect if you went down the street and asked people you know what did they think about ISDS they'd look at you. We don't have an ISDS in Ireland and arguably we don't need an ISDS because investment has worked very well in Ireland. Some might suggest that the Irish courts and the way in which the right to private property has been interpreted in the Irish constitution means that there would be no concerns about investor rights that it's already in fact well provided for an Irish law but of course TTIP is about a negotiation between the EU as a whole and the United States and there have been quite a number of examples of ISDS in practice. I'm going to mention one specific case involving the Romania and an ISDS agreement with Sweden some years prior to Romanian accession to the European Union. Now it's a complex case it's ongoing but the essence of it was a challenge on the part of the European Commission to the Romanian government to stop giving state aid which was actually arguably part of the original ISDS arrangement with Sweden and we have this very unusual situation where Romania is stuck between two positions one relating to a case of state aid which of course is not allowed under European law and on the other hand an ISDS agreement that predated Romanian accession to the to the EU and I just mentioned that because we are dealing with very complex issues I'm not convinced that ISDS would not be open to legal constitutional challenge in Germany or in Ireland no one can be certain about these matters it seems to me. Moving on from there there are of course other concerns it's not just about ISDS there are other areas of concern in relation to public services and the concern there is that in relation to those areas of public service that are part of the commercial economy that where charges apply or where there may be competition involving public and private entities that an instrument such as t-tip with ISDS could actually undermine the principle of public service provision I'm not talking here about public administration or general government administration but areas of general economic interest and commercial activity there's been a very animated debate in the UK about this and exchange of correspondence between the relevant Secretary of State and the European Commission with all sorts of guarantees and assurances but this certainly has not assured many civil society groups and indeed people across the political spectrum which brings me to a brief comment in relation to what has been discussed in the European Parliament over the last few months there has been a very interesting debate there a postponement of a vote in April and then a vote on a resolution in July of this year now just to remind ourselves that the European Parliament doesn't involve itself in the details of the t-tip negotiations it does however have a say in terms of going with it adopting it or not but the resolution in July contained many interesting compromise provisions some of which emphasize the inclusion of labour rights ILO labour conventions in any t-tip agreement now whether that actually would happen in practice and how that will be interpreted is another matter the key thing however is ISDS remains in the package and that actually was a key concern that led to a significant number of European members of Parliament voting against that resolution in July so the debate is very much live it's ongoing it's particularly intense in countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom perhaps less so here and it is something in which we need to be quite vigilant one final area that I'd like to address is the economics of t-tip and the impact of t-tip on the economy and jobs because there have been suggestions that this would be a game changer that it would be really important in terms of pulling Europe out of recession or stagnation rather again I think we need to be quite careful here because looking at the evidence for example in the Copenhagen study of the impact of t-tip here in Ireland and I've gone through that study and looked at different sectors that were covered in in that particular study it's first of all evident to me that the use of the computational general equilibrium model you might say what that's a model that assumes full employment and perfect elasticity in the supply of labour I won't I would further details but the technical assumptions made in any economic model are quite crucial to the outcome the thing that surprised me about the Copenhagen study actually is that the estimated probable impact in net terms on on Irish employment is actually quite modest it's somewhere in the region of five to ten thousand net additional jobs now place that on one side and on the other hand a very different model that would be preferred by on tat and if you take the work of Jeremy Capaldi with other colleagues in Tuft University in the US they used a different model a different set of technical assumptions and concluded that for Europe as a whole the net job impact would be negative rather than positive now no one could be certain about these outcomes there would certainly will be winners and losers sector by sector but I'm really trying to draw attention to the fact that there is uncertainty and also the scale of positive impact both on GDP and employment is actually modest in one sense compared to a much wider problem of how to increase investment raise scale levels and restructure and rebalance the European economy it's not clear to me that TTIP is actually the main or necessary or unavoidable driver that is going to deliver this change that we need what therefore in conclusion is the best way to approach this because it's easy to be critical what is the positive way forward here for for member states and the European Commission I would suggest a much slower process I would suggest moving away from a nominee bus approach which carries many risks and certainly does not have the support and buy-in of all civil society and if necessary that means subordinating trade and investment agreements to a much wider range of environmental labor and citizen interests which means that in the long run actually we're operating on sure ground thank you