Mr. John McCarthy:

The Secretary General mentioned that there are three to four staff in the dedicated unit. However, all other units in the Department also have a Brexit impact and so the economics division, the tax division and the financial services division are all interacting on this issue. The co-ordinating unit may be relatively small but all other units are feeding into it.

I am head of the economics division. In 2015, we asked the ESRI to carry out a scoping study, which we funded, of what Brexit might mean. Following the decision in June, we boosted the skill set within the economic division. Some of my team were working jointly with the ESRI on the macro impact of three different scenarios, namely, a soft, medium and hard exit. As stated, a hard exit is becoming increasing likely. In regard to a hard exit, we estimated, using model simulations, that it would shave about four percentage points off the level of GDP after seven or eight years. Alongside the budget, we published a sectoral impact which was a study of which sectors would be affected most. It is not surprising that it is the sectors most affected are the indigenous sectors of the economy.

The ESRI also looked on a more granular basis at the likely impact in terms of the tariffs on approximately 5,000 products. For example, meat might have an average tariff of 50%. The ESRI looked at what this might mean for Irish exports to the UK. In broad orders of magnitude, it would shave off approximately 30% of our exports to the UK. This means our exports overall would be reduced by approximately four percentage points. That is the type of work we are doing in the economics division. At the time of the budget, the Minister had a Brexit-ready plan which assessed what the Department of Finance could do with the instruments under the control of the Minister of Finance, namely, taxation, financial services and so forth. The Department of Finance co-ordination unit feeds into the Department of the Taoiseach group handling this matter.