Dr. Kevin Hanrahan:

I will address the questions on food inflation first. In all the economic analyses undertaken here and in the UK on the impact of Brexit, the losers include the UK consumer. Higher prices will reduce the purchasing power of the pound in their pockets. Consequently, their real income will be reduced.

If we believe the chairman of Tesco, who probably has much more control over prices than we have, food inflation of 4% or 5% in the UK, even if it is passed back to Irish agrifood industries and on to farmers, will not compensate for the magnitude of the depreciation in sterling that we have seen this year compared to last year. That is assuming the currencies do not more towards parity from their current differentials. For Irish suppliers, some increase at the retail level and in the food industry in the UK in the sterling prices they offer would be beneficial because it would allow the euro equivalent to increase a little, but it will not, in any major way, offset the impact. It might mitigate it but we will not see a return to the euro prices we had prior to Brexit and which we might have expected if Brexit has not happened.

Free trade is a two way street. Regarding Deputy Cahill's question on whether we can spancel the UK's relationships with non-EU countries, the UK can choose to do that if it agrees to be part of the customs union with the European Union but all the signals, and they are only that from the UK, are that it is not willing to give up its desire to have control over immigration and other issues and the question of whether it would contribute to the European Union budget would be the quid pro quofor doing that. One of the arguments of those in favour of Brexit was that they wanted to take control. Agreeing to limit their freedom to negotiate trade agreements with non-EU member states was one of the powers they were seeking to get their hands on, so I do not believe it is likely that we will be able to do that.

On the issue of retailer power, about which a number of members asked, while a number of member states of the EU were introducing legislation on this, any action at EU level that might happen once the UK is out of the EU would be irrelevant to the UK. As long as we are very reliant on the UK as a market, particularly its retail industry, if there are predatory practices in that industry, and we have no evidence that there are but that does not mean that does not happen, we will carry some of the consequences of that type of behaviour.