Mr. Gerard Brady:

Acyclical funding is essentially the reason that we prefer a bigger body and it can source outside funding.

On the enterprise model, I do not think anybody questions that foreign direct investment, FDI, has been incredibly good for the country. Can we do more on the indigenous side to complement FDI? Absolutely. FDI is still important. It is the reason that we stand out from other European countries which in the 1950s would have been at the poorer end of European countries. The FDI model is the main reason we have caught up and passed out many of the large central European countries.

We still have a significant number of challenges that will be made worse by Brexit. If one thinks of the sector where Irish indigenous industries have succeeded, food is probably the main one and it is facing an existential crisis of some magnitude. Aircraft leasing is another sector where we have done very well. That has been built on the back of the FDI model of globalisation and all of that. There are still major challenges in terms of building up the indigenous enterprise base. The FDI model is sustainable in that many of the foreign companies are embedded here and have invested serious levels of capital in the country and are not going to move overnight.