Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms King and Dr. McDonnell for coming in. Before getting into some of the specifics, do they agree that with the threat, challenge or whatever one wants to call it of Brexit and the concerns involved, there are the immediate and challenging issues that are related and that we confront but which have served to highlight much bigger problems, both economic and political, that predate the political shock of Brexit and which we need to address? Do they agree we need to stand back a little and see the wood for the trees? Much of what we are talking about is a matter of nuts and bolts in terms of the immediate challenges, and it strikes me that we have to stand back.

If we were to stand back, we could argue that the economy is vulnerable because it is not sufficiently diversified and its ability to diversify is significantly hampered by the fiscal and state aid rules we have identified. Does Ms King agree? This problem, which pre-dates Brexit, is an accident waiting to happen. Brexit simply exposed it in stark terms because the economy is not sufficiently diversified. We must give serious consideration to ways of diversifying the economy and identify areas into which it could be diversified, for example, forestry, which I have discussed often-----