Mr. Michael Gaynor:

I thank Senator O'Reilly and I echo his earlier comments on what his colleague said over lunch. He is right. There is a notion that Brexit is only relevant to the Border counties and that it does not really affect the whole island of Ireland. I think we need to bring this thinking into strong focus. Brexit will affect everybody on the island of Ireland.

Dundalk has always had a strong business community. The town of Dundalk is a good strong frontier town. There is strong Border business acumen. Senator Joe O'Reilly would appreciate that as he lives in Cavan. People living along the Border counties have a good strong business sense. Certainly, that would equally follow for Dundalk. Dundalk has lost many of its indigenous industries in the past 20 years. Dundalk was the premier manufacturing base for cigarettes, it also had Boots, engineering, etc. All these manufacturing companies have now gone. What has sprung up in the past number of years is a strong SME indigenous industry base in Dundalk. There also has been foreign direct investment in Dundalk, with large American companies such as eBay, Paypal and so on employing many local people.

A lot of employment in Dundalk is in enterprises that operate from both sides of the Border. Many people from across the Border work in these communities. Hence my earlier statement on people crossing the Border. They may have to pass the Border three or four different times to get into Dundalk. That is important because in the event of Border controls it is indicative of how inconvenient that might be. Let me give an example. In the recent months the Customs and Excise set up a checkpoint on a small slip road outside Dundalk, near Ballymascanlon. The checkpoint was set up to check for illegal immigrants. On that occasion the Customs and Excise used the slip road to completely take the flow from the motorway through the slip into a customs area, where each car was checked before being allowed to go on. This caused a two and a half hour delay for those travelling from Belfast. I believe some of the people on the air coaches travelling from Belfast to Dublin missed flights because of the delay. That is a prime example of exactly what might happen if there was a hard Border in place. I am of an age to remember the hard Border. Let me give another example. Up until the early nineties there were continual queues and traffic jams, with lorries waiting outside Dundalk for customs clearance. I live in the lovely Cooley peninsula towards Carlingford and I vividly remember travelling with my children to school in Dundalk and being caught in these non-stop queues which continued for so many years. The return of these traffic queues would be a disaster. I also remember travelling across the Border from Omeath in County Louth to Warrenpoint, which is just across the Border. In the summer there was a tourist option to travel by boat across the Border to Warrenpoint. I vividly remember a return journey on this ferryboat and the Customs and Excise would be on both sides checking people coming back from their two hour tourist trip across the Border to see whether they were smuggling. These are just some examples of what could happen if there is a return to a hard border. Certainly the free flow of goods and traffic would be of major concern to everybody who is living along the Border.

Dundalk has a huge agricultural hinterland and would depend on the custom from the farming business. This is an issue of major concern. As members know, southern Ireland takes up to 80% of the milk produced in Northern Ireland. Anything that might stop that free flow of milk to the South would be hugely problematic. We have already seen the damage to the mushroom industry, particularly in counties Monaghan and Cavan. Currency issues were a factor of the failure of the mushroom industry. When we speak of currency issues, those who live in the Border counties have always lived with currency issues, it has been back and forth, one month the currency is in our favour and the next month it is against us. At present most of the businesses in Dundalk would gauge that they could stand an exchange rate up to £0.85 p. If sterling rises to £0.90 p it becomes problematic, particularly for the small SME businesses who work on low margins that are selling directly to the UK. We have many of those businesses in Dundalk. Some of them are working on 15% to 20% profit margins, and if they are losing 10% of the margin on currency, it is devastating and hugely detrimental to them continuing in business. We have seen a number of businesses that have been and are struggling because of the currency differential. The worrying thing is that may get worse as the Brexit negotiations continue. The likelihood is that we will have a continual problem with sterling which will impact on all local activity, including the farming community as well. I have a major concern about that.

As I said earlier, we have a good strong business community in Dundalk, as we have always had, and the business community is vibrant and strong. The level of unemployment in Dundalk is slightly above the national average. It is coming in at around 8.5% at present. I would say the business community is vibrant and strong and wants to remain that way. I take Senator Nash's point that we would be very interested in getting support for industries on the Border. I would certainly support some mechanism that might be able to highlight these businesses if they were getting into trouble. That would be something to look at and to ask Enterprise Ireland or the IDA to get involved and to set up some sort of a mechanism where these type of problems could be identified readily and something put in place to help local industries. We have moved on from the high levels of unemployment and let us maintain it. We would be very anxious that adjustments could be made happen in the local community. Our local enterprise offices and the chamber of commerce works very closely with the County Louth enterprise office based in Dundalk. The County Lough enterprise office is very strong.

The office recently held an enterprise week featuring numerous training programmes, which was attended by large numbers of businesses from Dundalk. I commend it on the support it provides to local business. As I stated, we work closely with other chambers of commerce.

On the support that could be provided along the Border, some months ago we met members of the German Bundestag in Dundalk. I was surprised to note their pessimism concerning the possibility of securing special status for the Border region. They suggested a hard Border was possible. It is hard to know whether their position has changed since our meeting but they were not enthusiastic about a case being made for special status. In their view, this is a European issue and not one that is unique to Ireland. Other parts of Europe might seek special status because every country in Europe has a border. They found it difficult to understand the reasons we are seeking special status.

I noted the importance of the Government continuing to impress on other European Union member states the need for special status for the Border counties. It has been suggested that we seek some form of economic zone for the entire island, rather than only the Border counties. A precedent was set following the unification of Germany when an economic zone was created in the former East Germany. Perhaps we could seek something along those lines to facilitate continued free trade and a customs union. The chamber of commerce and general community in Dundalk are anxious to find out if this idea could be promoted at national and EU levels.

Consumer confidence is closely related to currency fluctuations, which cause great damage to retail business in Border towns. The position in Cavan is similar to the position in Dundalk. We regularly meet representatives of chambers of commerce in Cavan, Monaghan and Carrickmacross and they echo the points made by Senator O'Reilly. Retail confidence is a problematic issue and Brexit is a worry for businesses considering expansion.

The Dundalk Chamber of Commerce was to the fore in developing the town's shop local voucher scheme. The idea behind the scheme, which we launched some 18 months ago, was to help maintain jobs and indigenous retail outlets in the general locality of Dundalk. Under the scheme, people buy vouchers which can be used in approximately 250 shops in Dundalk, thus keeping money in the town. The scheme has been incredibly successful. To date, the chamber of commerce has sold vouchers with a value of more than €750,000, which have been redeemed readily by up to 250 local shops. The impact has been strong in the local community. The scheme showed that local communities have a major interest in local retail and helped solidify community spirit in the Border town of Dundalk. It allowed us to do something very positive to promote the town and maintain business in it.

The business community in Dundalk will not sit back or roll over. We must do something and the shop local voucher scheme is one initiative we have taken. We estimate that every €1 spent under the scheme is worth €4 in the community because the money circulates in the local economy. The scheme has been successful and has helped the local retail sector.

I am in favour of Senator Nash's proposal on setting up mechanisms to highlight business links and expand support for local businesses.