Mr. Ed Sibley:

To be completely clear, in the scenario Deputy Doherty described there, which is unfortunately plausible, it would be rocky. There is a high degree of interconnectedness between the Irish economy and the UK economy. From an economic perspective it would be very challenging. I am sure Deputy Doherty is very well aware of that.

From a financial services perspective there is also a high level of interconnectedness in a number of ways, and in addition to the interconnectedness the UK, and London in particular, is such a provider of financial services capability and flow into the rest of the EU that, in the event of a hard or chaotic Brexit, it would be disruptive. It would be disruptive economically and from a financial services perspective.

We are very focused in terms of our work between now and the end of March on making sure that we have a very good handle on those cliff-edge risks. We are driving the firms to mitigate the risks as much as we can and we are mitigating them ourselves as much as we can, but it is plausible that there will be something of a gap between where we can get to and where we would like to be in terms of fully mitigating the risks.

I used the example of insurance. From a freedom of services perspective, the example I have used elsewhere concerns insurance protection for car rentals. They are one-off policies that are not necessarily part of an ongoing relationship with a policyholder. There may be potential issues there. We are very focused on closing them down as much as we can, but given the nature of the scenario described by Deputy Doherty I do not think we could give 100% assurance that there will not be some rockiness.