Mr. Joe Durkan:

Senator Terry Leyden asked about Ireland leaving the European Union. I thought about it very peripherally and I did not think there was the remotest possibility that we would leave because the balance of advantage for us has to be to stay within the European Union.

Deputy Eric Byrne's questions were mostly political. I am not heavy into politics but try to think of the economics of things. When one looks at the UK one has to ask what is driving it. It seems to me that the referendum is being driven by a small group of people, the Eurosceptics within the Tory Party and the fear of UKIP. The trouble is that the more these people make noise, the more Mr. Cameron and so on responds to it an attempt to show that he is not being caught offside. He may be painting himself into a corner - that is what I suspect. I cannot see, given what everybody believes about the disadvantages to Britain, that it would do something that is not in its interests. I just do not believe that but the UK could be driven to it if the vote turns out to be the way it is. I would expect the members of the committee to know more about this than me because they are in the political process and I am not. I try to avoid it if I can.

In terms of the negotiations, Article 50 of the treaty allows for people to exit so the procedure is laid down. I think it would take a long time, it may be two years before it could get out and then it could spend another two years negotiating a trade agreement. Trade agreements take much longer than one would think. Switzerland still has not completed its part of EFTA but is not part of the European Economic Area so it still has not got a formal agreement on all the trade that is needed. I am not really into the politics.

There was a very interesting article in last week's edition of The Economistwhich talked about the fragmentation of the political system in Britain. Instead of being just two parties there is now an awful lot more in it. One cannot ignore Scotland any more and one cannot ignore Northern Ireland. I am not sure about how Wales fits in but it has to take account of that. It will be the United Kingdom leaving the European Union - it is not one bit of it that will leave, the whole lot will leave. Scotland will not have the option of not leaving, nor will Northern Ireland. The whole of the United Kingdom will leave.

Deputy Durkan asked me about the really important question, namely, the impact on the European Union. The European Union will have an interest in concluding a trade deal with Britain. It is in its interests. It does not want Britain to be outside. Britain is still a big market and it sells a lot. It will want to do a trade deal. It will not want it to be too advantageous for Britain. Obviously it cannot let Britain decide it will get rid of a whole rake of regulations. It will still have to conform to the regulations in place. That is inevitable. It will not be able to get rid of the red tape.

As for the European project, Britain never bought into it and I am not sure we did either. Members should bear in mind that this grew out of the Second World War. I taught a course on European integration to my students and spent three or four lectures talking about what happened after the war because that is the motivation for the European project. People might forget it because it is 70 years ago but it is still there. Many people in Germany remember what it was like just after the war. There was an extraordinary level of displacement as people were forced to leave parts of Poland and what were then Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The devastation wrought by that and by similar events throughout Europe is something they do not forget. We did not experience it so we may not have bought into it. We bought into it because it looked like it involved money or employment but the originators of the project probably had a different perception of what they were trying to achieve from the one we have.

I was asked about the performance of the UK economy. There is no doubt that in the run-up to the referendum investment in the UK will be weaker. It is inevitable and the consequence of that will be a reduced medium-term performance and a weaker supply side of that economy.