Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The way it was approached was that the work was done in the spring economic statement on the basis of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union. Then there were forecast data available as to the downside if the United Kingdom were to leave the European Union. As the Deputy knows, there is a page in the summer economic statement setting out the risk and how it would diminish growth and the consequences of that. Now that this has happened, it is a fact. The potential risk in the summer economic statement has become an actual risk. Beyond that, we are not in a position at present to refine the forecast further, except to say that, depending on the result, there will obviously be consequences. However, there are still some people in the system who say this will play to Ireland’s advantage because of a stronger run of direct investment or activity from London being transferred to Dublin. We simply do not know. Forecasts are made on estimates. New stability programme update, SPU, figures will be generated that will have to go to Brussels in the autumn. There will be many people making forecasts and I presume the movement will be downward. The Central Bank said yesterday it will revisit its forecasts. The IMF is running numbers as we speak and will probably have data out at the end of July. It normally has a very cautious attitude so I would be surprised if it improved our figures. It is more likely to be marking down. That is what is happening everywhere now as a result of Brexit.

We do not know the full impact of Brexit yet. The damage in Ireland so far has not been significant and has been contained. We know there is movement on the currency and on sterling against the dollar. We can predict some of the effects of this on exporting to the United States. We know sterling has declined in value against the euro, but we know the euro has declined in value also, so the relative trading positions are not far from where they were for the past six months.

These things must be factored in. It will settle with about 10% taken off the value of the Irish Stock Exchange. One can see that Irish companies quoted on the UK stock market, where there are many UK and international investors like Bank of Ireland and Ryanair, took big hits early on but we are not sure where it will settle. In terms of our core economic activity, there is no serious economic hit yet. We have often talked about economic instability following political instability. There is great political instability in the UK about who governs and who the alternative Government is. There is political instability about Scotland. There is less political stability about Northern Ireland but the vote there raised some serious and interesting questions. The big issue in Northern Ireland is the question about whether people are serious about having a land border of 60 km north of Dublin cutting across the island and making it an international border. I do not believe that is a runner but we will not be able to do a bilateral arrangement on that. The EU must be involved in it. In respect of controlling the movement of people, we have all gone through various airports. When a person comes through Dublin Airport, he or she shows his or her passport if he or she is an EU citizen. People are in a different queue if they are a non-EU citizen. I cannot see why an arrangement could not be made whereby the control points are at Larne, Belfast Airport, Liverpool or Southampton - the access ports to the UK - rather than having some kind of cut across the middle of our island. I think that is an impossible proposition. I do not think it is a runner but the solutions must be negotiated. What those solutions might be will have an impact on economic activity on this island and one cannot yet factor it in regarding a forecast.