Mr. Eoin O'Neill:

There are pluses and minuses within sectors but, overall, if I had a choice, I would prefer, for clarity purposes, to stay where I was rather than where I might be going.

Undoubtedly there is about £1 billion a year of research funding that goes into the UK that potentially will come out of the UK in the context of Brexit. That is particularly focused on research and development functions and supports at third level. I am not 100% sure of this statistic but my colleague Ms Katie Daughen might comment, that roughly about 25% of academics in the United Kingdom come from outside the common travel area. Straight away there are issues in terms of the potential academics going to work in the university sector but also the research work they do and in many respects, the money follows the academics, not the other way. There is an opportunity within that sector. I contend strongly that there is an opportunity for Irish universities to partner with UK universities to actually build a constructive future for themselves to be an European base and UK base, because the United Kingdom will still be a source of a significant amount of funding in the context of that. Our patron, Mr. Niall FitzGerald, the former chairman of Unilever and other companies across the UK who many will know is a man of strong Irish conviction and Munster rugby conviction is a very strong proponent of this idea that the UK universities, in his role as the chair of the Leverhulme Trust, will support each other and in that context will seek European support. I think English speaking universities in Ireland are a natural home for that space. The British Irish Chamber of Commerce has an education committee and an education group chaired by-----