Dr. Kieran McQuinn:

I remember some time ago in a commentary reflecting the near dismay at the stance that certain parties in Northern Ireland were taking as far as this issue was concerned and saying that, of all the different regional economies on these islands, it was the economy in Northern Ireland that was most likely to be impacted in the most significant fashion as a result of Brexit. At least in our case, we were still going to be members of the European Union after all this settled down, whereas Northern Ireland, which has a very heavy reliance on agrifood, as we know, was facing not only all of the uncertainties that we were facing into but also being left in the situation potentially of not being a member of the European Union. We all know the substantial level of payments that come from the Common Agricultural Policy, and these are very important, particularly in rural areas. There is great uncertainty about what would happen to those kinds of payments if Northern Ireland, as well as the rest of the UK, were to leave the European Union. As an economy in its own terms, it would be especially impacted, even compared with ourselves.

Our former colleague, John FitzGerald, has done some work looking at the nature of the all Ireland economy, and I believe he gave a presentation on it before Christmas. He pointed to the fact that Northern Ireland's performance in general, not just in terms of Brexit and its impact, has not been exactly stellar in the past 20 years. He pointed out that despite the fact that there have been significant transfers under the Good Friday Agreement etc, there has not been a significant improvement in the underlying performance of the economy there. That also goes towards another point about the UK and the argument that the UK economy has not fallen that much. Looking at the underlying situation in the UK, however, it is quite worrying. They have had a productivity problem in the UK for some years that has predated Brexit, and all the signs are that Brexit, if it does go ahead, would only exacerbate those kinds of issues. We would be particularly concerned about the outcome of Brexit as far as Northern Ireland's economy is concerned and the knock-on effect on the overall economy of the island of Ireland because of the increasingly integrated nature across the Border. It is a real concern.

On some of the Deputy's more specific points, some of the most micro level information we have is the sentiment indicators that we talked about: the consumer sentiment indicators and the investment indicators. We do not have that level of granularity in terms of looking at individual sectors, such as hotel bookings and things like that. They all inevitably feed in to some of the sentiment indicators. As I said, certainly on the consumer sentiment but also on the investment sentiment, it is clear that there has been a downward trajectory in those indicators in the past six or seven months. In particular in the case of consumer sentiment, it is quite a sharp decline.