Mr. Seamus Coffey:

I will take the first part of the question and someone will step in for the second part. On the forecasts, the Minister today announced that a hard Brexit will form the central scenario for the macro forecast set out for budget 2020. It is important to realise that the central scenario beforehand was the withdrawal agreement, involving a transition period up to the end of 2021 and then a future relationship in the trading between the UK and the EU. That was the base case scenario. One can ask, taking in that soft Brexit, what the forecasts would be if Brexit did not happen at all. That was the base case.

As my colleague stated earlier, perhaps the change in our view of what would constitute a hard Brexit is that more of the costs are now upfront rather than delayed and there is perhaps an increase in the estimate of what those initial upfront costs could be and what ones will arise in a hard Brexit scenario because of trade disruption and the impact of non-tariff barriers, whether queues of traffic at Dover or trying to figure out what form to fill in to get goods over the Border. The previous case would have been the withdrawal agreement and the transition. There would have been some impact but those costs were much further out into the medium to long term, the view being that Brexit is a permanent structural change and could have an impact on the markets to which Ireland sells goods. It was not as if Brexit was not built into the forecast previously. It is just that it has been announced that we have introduced Brexit to the forecasts today. It was in the forecast previously. It is only the scenario that has now changed.