Ms Patricia King:

Every company will be faced, first, with the challenge of what is their in light of Brexit, who do they trade with and if a major component part of their trade is with the UK, can they continue that in a no Brexit scenario? They have decisions to make. In light of the possibility of a no Brexit, are they exploring diversification to new markets and, if they are, what does that require them to do? There is the matter of the agility of their workforce to face up and quickly respond to new products they might have to produce for new markets. I would not like to give the impression that State agencies have been silent throughout this. State agencies such as Enterprise Ireland and Bord Bia have been working extraordinarily hard with these companies and many of them have responded well to that work by getting themselves Brexit ready and having the agility within their workforce to respond to the possibility of diversification into new markets and so.

Mr. Feargal O'Brien referred to the issue of the risk to competitiveness. If those companies decide they are best placed to continue to trade with the UK, competitive issues come in if there is a no-deal Brexit. That is where the race to the bottom starts. Those companies will be forced to say they need to be more competitiveness, that their labour costs, for instance, are too high compared to what is being done in the UK and the way companies can produce the same product for much less. That pressure will come on the workforces and the companies in Ireland and that will have a ricochet effect on what companies will expect in terms of pay, labour costs and so on. That is where the pinch point will be. It would be wrong to give the impression that companies have not been involved in very key discussions with State agencies and that the Government has not been attempting over a number of years to help people to place themselves better to cope with Brexit but, from our perspective, the pinch point that will come will be as I have described.

The point I have made throughout the discussion is that most companies will advise that reskilling, upskilling and training workers is a positive thing to do but they will also point out that it costs money and investment. In some cases they are afraid to make that investment because they might need that money in a post-Brexit scenario. There are many component parts to this. The uncertainty leads to the fact that we cannot answer all the questions but, from our point of view, education, upskilling, and retraining are never wasted and most companies would agree with that. All the big pharma, chemical, medical devices companies are doing very good training. Training is a complete part of their ongoing daily and weekly work. The smaller medium sized businesses are not placed in the same order as those bigger companies. Therefore, the State aid has to go into those to ensure they get everything they need to meet the agility that will be required in a post Brexit scenario.