Mr. John McGrane:

I will pick up on the earliest question with a very quick name check against specific infrastructure opportunities. We have the only Government in Europe with a national strategy for housing, which is a very good thing and we need to move as fast as we possibly can to execute it. Education is a key current and long-term infrastructure piece. We need to implement the Cassells report and get on with a funded, viable, globally-competitive education system. We need to build a second runway at Dublin Airport for air access, so let us get on with it. With regard to capital investment in the economy, we have a broadband strategy which is great but we need to move faster to roll it out. We also need balanced regional recovery.

This is not about Dublin, or indeed Cork, good as both are, but about achieving a response that is long-term, Whitaker-esque, has a 60 year view and has a vision for the recovery for the whole of Ireland through some of the opportunities that present themselves now. That is not least considering the threat to agriculture and tourism, which is clearly a provincial issue.

Senator McDowell's question is an important one. The work that is being done by the five civil servants and others has been of an extraordinarily high grade. The work of the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce spans the UK and Ireland, and indeed the EU. We know of no other government or government team supported by civil servants and diplomats that has done as much work with such focus to such excellent outcomes. We put that on the record. Many of us have stood to let that work happen. We did not disappear but waited alongside. We have sat one chair behind our colleagues so that they could do the hard work at diplomatic level that had to happen first. That was done below the radar, when many out on the street where asking where the Minister for Brexit was and what the plan was. We had the privilege of knowing the work that was being done, and they have brought it in. The onus now moves to business and the rest of society to play our part. Of course, it is too big a task to ask diplomats and civil servants, and Ministers and the Taoiseach, dare I say, to come up with the solutions. Business, which in the UK was fatally silent before the referendum, now knows that it has to play its part.

On the specific question of whether we had met before and ventilated this, this is an emerging work in progress between people of like mind across diverse franchises, people who represent one territory or one cohort. The unique position of the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce as a two island neutral organisation involves a responsibility to think on that broad plane. We are happy to bring that forward for consideration and we will ventilate it with our colleagues and like minded organisations.