Mr. Mickey Brady:

I thank the witnesses for the presentations. I must declare an interest as a representative of the Newry and Armagh constituency, which, as the witness has indicated very clearly, is going to be badly impacted by Brexit if it comes about. The resurgence of Newry in terms of business is down to people like Mr. Blaney. It is not down to outside influences or outside investment. Autoline, Warrenpoint Port, the Newry and Mourne Enterprise Agency, First Derivatives and Norbrook all come from local people and do not depend on the outside. It is a Newry thing that people have that get-up-and-go approach to make it a success.

When I started as an advice worker in the 1980s, Newry had the third highest unemployment rate in western Europe. That has changed. Dr. Patterson said that we are now at 2%, but we are still a low-wage economy. Taking the quays for example, one could walk from Debenhams at one end to Sainsburys at the other. Most of the profits from all of those shops and organisations goes back to Britain. The only thing that comes into our economy from those particular sources in most cases is the minimum wage, or what is now called the living wage.

There is one practical issue that I have come across that perhaps has not been fully addressed. It is the dependence of people in our area on the likes of tax credits because of the low wage. We have many people, and I deal with them daily, who work in Newry and live across the Border or vice versa. They are going to be badly impacted. At the moment, living in one jurisdiction and working in another is called a complex case. If Brexit is to happen, that situation is going to become even more complex. I know that some people are left without benefit on top of their wages and without a supplement. There are issues like that.

The common travel area is something that has been spoken about with regard to Brexit. For many people, I believe that is a red herring. People in Newry tend to gravitate to the South socially. Very rarely would young people in Newry go to Banbridge, Dromore, Hillsborough or even Belfast, although maybe that is more so the case now. There has always been that connection with the South. If Brexit is to happen, it is not necessarily going to stop people travelling from Newry to Dundalk to socialise or whatever. It is more about the tariffs and how businesses are affected, particularly the likes of the port. In the case of the enterprise agency, the location of the enterprise centre in Flurrybridge, which is right on the Border, was a deliberate move to encourage that diversification between North and South. Therefore, there is no doubt that Brexit will have a huge impact.

We talk about employment rights in terms of the Good Friday Agreement, much of which was predicated on human rights from Europe, employment rights and all of that. The British are intent on rewriting the script on that. There is no doubt that will have an adverse effect.

Most farmers in the constituency rely on the single farm payment because we have a lot of small farmers, unlike the co-operatives in the south east of England. As Mr. Michael Blaney said, a lot of his staff and business are cross-Border so there is the issue of how that might be impacted. It is the same with workers in small businesses. People may want to stay within the EU if Britain pulls out. How frustrating would that be with Warrenpoint port? If one takes Omeath and Greenore in Carlingford as examples, people would have to pay tariffs to travel that relatively small distance. All these issues will have a huge impact on our area if Brexit is put into place. The witnesses have articulated very well the difficulties that our area in particular and the whole Border region faces. Along the Border region, since partition, people in Newry, Dundalk and Drogheda and places like that have done the business themselves and not relied on outside influences. That continues and is to their credit.