Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. An extensive operation is under way out of the Department working with the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and the Departments of the Taoiseach and Foreign Affairs to make sure financial services entities that currently reside in the UK continue to have access to the Single Market from other locations should they find at the conclusion of the Brexit negotiations that they are unable to retain such access from the UK. The work I am involved is to ensure Dublin and Cork, in particular, are seen as destinations for these firms to continue to access the Single Market. Having been appointed to this role, I visited London prior to the Brexit vote to talk to the London Irish Business Society and the diplomatic community. I also met a few other Irish people who are involved in business there to get their sense of where everything was going. I met bank representatives to talk about their contingency planning. Once the decision was known, engagement on our side ramped up quickly because we had one our contingency planning as a Government but companies had also done their contingency planning. They were coming back into the country to kick the tyres around again.

IFS 2020 is the five-year strategy for expanding our international financial services sector. We immediately went about retooling some of the key elements of the action plan for 2016 to adapt it to Brexit. We wanted to launch the new promotional banner brand, IFS Ireland, which represents the IDA and the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Finance, in Asia and North America in order that when people saw IFS Ireland, they knew what it meant - a young, educated workforce in a niche, developing, innovative financial services centre. Brexit gave us the opportunity to talk about how much of a better offering we have. We, therefore, talk about the three Ls - language, location and law. We are a common law jurisdiction, an English speaking workforce is important to Asian countries as is our location in terms of accessibility not just to London but to other parts of Europe.

At the same time, I began to engage with industry domestically and elsewhere, particularly in London, to put together further contingency planning around risks and opportunities. I am a member of the Cabinet sub-committee on Brexit and I have a feed into that work there as well. Ongoing work was done in parallel with continued engagements in Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York and Washington last year and Hong Kong, Beijing and a number of trips to London so far this year.

Prime Minister May has sought to put potentially a carve-out for financial services in a free trade agreement. That might come in the future. I have met representatives of the corporation, City of London, a few times and they have lobbied hard for such an agreement. However, they have since changed their position and they are seeking more of a bespoke arrangement where there might be passporting or its equivalent for certain entities. That means we continue to live in an environment of uncertainty. If the authorisation process for a financial services entity takes more than two years, it will be unable to wait until we have sight of what will happen. From last September onwards, we began to learn that companies would make decisions in the first two quarters of this year. I have made sure I am available to meet those entities where they have questions around the operating environment here. Sometimes they will go through the IDA or directly to my office or I organise meetings in London with 60 or 70 people in the room to discuss all the benefits of coming to Ireland and continuing to access the Single Market in terms of financial services offerings.

The IFS 2020 action plan for this year was launched at the European Financial Forum. This was attended by approximately 700 delegates from more than 400 companies based in 20 countries. Meetings were held on the side and there was a great deal of positive engagement and positive press. The action plan has two components. The first relates to the context of the Brexit, the Central Bank, international education and communications and the second outlines the 40 key actions under four pillars. Some have a specific Brexit dimension but others are more about maintaining a commitment to the regions and a focus on particular subsectors which all have a Brexit element underneath that.

To come back to the core question, what we think will happen is companies will continue to have a presence in the UK, including US companies, but they will move portions of their business abroad or start new hires abroad. They will go to different jurisdictions but we will in the mix and we will get more than our fair share from what I am hearing. I am worried about what other jurisdictions are saying to firms at a regulatory level when they meet them in terms of commitments they might be making that they may be unable to fulfil. That is doing a little reputational damage to our offering and, therefore, we are robustly countering that at every opportunity.