Dr. Gabriel Fagan:

Mr. Cassidy covered most of the issues that have been raised. In terms of the special arrangements, I would add that, as Mr. Cassidy has highlighted, it is very important that both the European and UK authorities have signalled their recognition of the special nature of the problems facing Ireland so there is quite a lot of goodwill there and an awareness of the problems. That is very welcome. There may be scope to achieve some adjustments in terms of special programmes for Border areas and stuff like that - all sorts of arrangements that could be considered. The goodwill seems to be there.

In respect of the fiscal space, as Mr. Cassidy highlighted, despite the considerable improvements in the public finances we have seen since 2012, we are still in a fiscally vulnerable position. The debt is high. It may be flattered by a GDP number which is very large but when one uses a more realistic measure, one can still see that the public finances in Ireland are relatively vulnerable to shocks so we should be very cautious in saying that because of Brexit, we need to relax in some sense in terms of the fiscal programme for the country. That might be going in the wrong direction.

What the Central Bank has done has been raised. It is important to state that we have increased considerably the amount of resources we have in the bank to deal with Brexit-related issues such as authorisations and are planning to increase them considerably. The bank is an independent organisation so it does not need permission from the Government to increase its staff. It does that in the context of its own board - the Central Bank Commission - which makes the decision. That has been done. The budget for 2017 envisages quite a significant Brexit-related increase in staff mainly in the area of supervision. The basic point is that there will be no constraint caused by lack of resources in the Central Bank for financial firms to locate in Ireland if they wish to do so.