Professor Edgar Morgenroth:

I will start with Brexit. There are two aspects. First, from an outside investor's perspective, if one looks at Northern Ireland and at what has happened recently, the violence that received air time not just in Ireland but also internationally is not very helpful. This simply perpetuates a view that Northern Ireland is not a stable, secure place in which to invest for an external investor. That is very difficult to fight. The pictures that go out on international television stations are really damaging. We can do without that. It serves no purpose and undermines any good one might try to do.

From an institutional perspective, be it Invest NI or others, there is a difficulty, which Irish firms are also facing. If a business is currently being supplied by a GB supplier and that supply is now becoming more expensive because of non-tariff barriers, where will the business find an alternative supplier? If it is a small company, that is a really big task. This is something we find in Ireland, where many companies have had UK suppliers. We have seen the stories in The Irish Times about bakeries and flour. It is not difficult to find flour. It is a homogenous commodity. One can get flour of an identical quality in France, but if one has a small bakery and one does not speak French or have connections to the French flour milling industry, how is one going to find a supplier? That is the biggest issue many of these firms in Northern Ireland are facing. If they are trying to make use of the fact that they can now get supplies from within the EU and use Northern Ireland as an entry point to GB for EU goods or intermediate goods, they do not have these connections.

Traditionally, we have always looked at exporting and promoting exports, but we might need to find ways of promoting imports and of connecting firms to potential suppliers. That is something we face south of the Border and there is the same issue north of the Border. One could probably replace pretty much every product that currently comes from GB into Ireland or into the island of Ireland with an EU equivalent. I have done some research on this. It is quite remarkable. The problem is that one is not going to know where one will be able to buy it.