Mr. Thomas Hunter McGowan:

We are encouraging companies to build relationships before anything happens and to develop a good relationship both with their customers and their suppliers. In some cases, there will be imports in the value chain that will be affected by Brexit in some way. We are telling companies to get familiar with their customers and to develop the relationship. Therefore, even if there are some adverse consequences, they may not lose the business simply because they have had to deal with a higher cost base. They will be known and trusted to give a good product or service. Now is a good time to build those relationships.

There are other programmes. Enterprise Ireland delivers Lean initiatives. They are very effective for slightly larger organisations. They can squeeze an awful lot of cost out of an organisation. These are the things we are telling people to consider and propel towards. We are not telling any company to give up and go away. If a company can diversify, that is well and good. However, often for SMEs the product or service that has been delivered is very much directed towards a reasonably local market. By local, I mean the UK or Ireland. It is not really transferable in a lot of cases to any other European country in a ready format. In that regard, we have to deal with what is in front of us and try to meet the challenge head on. That is why we put our Brexit advisory service in place. We will try to give a steady hand to anyone to guide them through it.

We are not alone. All State agencies have been active in this regard. Bord Bia is doing something for food companies and is helping people to navigate through that end of it. Enterprise Ireland is working with its particular clients. It deals with 3,500 companies. It is looking at companies that are exposed. Effectively, all the different State agencies work together and independently to try to help companies steer through this. We are confident that the concerns companies have can be addressed, by and large, and can be navigated fairly reasonably through all of this.