Mr. Marc Coleman:

I am grateful for the chance the committee has given Financial Services Ireland to highlight our views on Brexit. Ireland has a once in a lifetime opportunity to attract financial services jobs to the State, possibly in their thousands. We need to maximise our competitiveness, vis-à-visother jurisdictions, as soon as possible in areas such as skills, infrastructure, regulation and taxation.

Financial Services Ireland is part of IBEC, Ireland’s largest business representative body accounting for seven in ten private sector workers in Ireland. Financial Services Ireland is the oldest and only fully cross-sectoral body in financial services representation and, with other stakeholders, we have assisted the building of Ireland's financial services employment from a very small number thirty years ago to tens of thousands today. Our forthcoming industry survey, to be published in the autumn, will provide up-to-date data from across the country on employment totals and on contribution of the sector to the Exchequer. We will be happy to share this information with the committee.

We are particularly keen to promote regional employment in our sector. When we were entrusted as the first secretariat to the IFS 2020 industry advisory group we supported this point strongly. On a practical level through IBEC we help our members to understand the challenges of Brexit, for example with the IBEC publication Brexit: A Guide for Your Business. We promote awareness of Brexit regionally, such as at our event in Limerick on 5 May. I can talk more about that and we will replicate it around the country in order to highlight the potential.

Our work on the skills aspect is also very relevant to Brexit. Our Summit Finuas Network programme - part of Skillnets - assists employees to train for newer and better employment. Our new proposed apprenticeship scheme will bring new talent into the industry as it continues to grow and give opportunities to young people and our Career Start programme has helped hundreds of employees in the industry to find a path back to work after job loss. We see the social dimension in this respect as being very important.

As well as benefitting workers themselves, all efforts to increase access to financial services talent will help our economy by ensuring that firms that want to locate here can find the skill sets they need. We have led our industry’s analysis of Brexit and its consequences. We hosted the first seminar after the Brexit referendum was called in June of 2015 and hosted the first ever post-referendum analysis of its consequences in June of 2016.

I will now turn to what we are asking of Government and Opposition in relation to Brexit and financial services. First we ask for an understanding of how vital financial services are to Ireland's economy now. With a hard Brexit posing a significant employment threat, we will need to hold on to existing financial services jobs in the sector and maximise its undoubted further employment creation potential. We need to channel jobs growth into regions that could potentially be adversely affected by job losses in other sectors. To those ends we fully endorse IBEC’s call for EU 27-British negotiations to secure a smooth exit, a smooth transition and the closest possible business relationship for Ireland and Britain in the future, in terms of North-South links in financial services but particularly in relation to east-west Ireland-Britain trade relations. We emphasise that Ireland and Europe will remain part of a dynamic global financial services market where competition will intensify. Britain will continue to be a powerful force in global financial services and minimising disruption to Irish-British links in this regard is in our interest and in the EU’s interest.

With thousands of current jobs and potential new jobs in play, jobs that are or could be located all around Ireland, Financial Services Ireland is specifically calling for the following measures. We welcome IDA Ireland's success in recent announcements of firms that are locating here and, in relation to firms relocating to other jurisdictions other than Ireland as a result of Brexit, we would welcome a constructive assessment of these decisions, positive and negative, to get the best understanding possible of the issues driving these decisions.

Second, and this touches on Mr. Lardner's point, we would like to see an early commitment to comprehensive transitional arrangements to reduce potential market disruption and to provide certainty to employees and clients of financial service providers in Ireland, the UK and EU 27. A transition arrangement is needed so that there will be a relatively predictable environment for business to take place in over the next few years while the future EU-UK trade deal is worked out.

Third, we need continued access to talent. Our sector’s progress in job creation draws strength from its ability to retrain staff for new challenges and bring in talent from abroad. A business environment with policies that strengthen employer-driven training and make Ireland competitive for highly skilled workers will protect thousands of existing jobs and create hundreds if not thousands more. It is also worth highlighting the diaspora, many of whom have gained relevant experience abroad and who might like to live and work in Ireland again.

Fourth, we must ensure that Ireland adheres to EU benchmarks for regulation but also that Ireland benefits from equality in terms of Ireland’s position in this regardvis-à-visother jurisdictions. This means a fair regulatory environment across Europe. We must also ensure that EU regulators engage in structured dialogue with the UK post-Brexit and, more generally, with the US and other relevant global financial centres.

Finally, as all organisations are looking at their own talent pipelines due to Brexit and in light of the critical role of the regulator, we support its ongoing efforts to do the same.