Dr. Aidan Regan:

The first observation is that the UK, particularly London, is the FDI hub into Europe. I know we talk a lot about Dublin but the UK is where the vast majority of external FDI goes, even within the EU, so there are clearly bilateral implications. As matters stands, the UK has made it very clear that it will be outside the customs union, which poses all sorts of issues for Northern Ireland, such as where the Border will be because there must be an external frontier. To a certain extent, the UK has subtly threatened that it would engage in regulatory competition unless it got a very favourable trade agreement. From Ireland's perspective, agrifood would be massively implicated because the UK would suddenly be importing low-quality food from outside the EU such that we would be competing on cost, not quality.