Mr. Neil McDonnell:

I will respond in the rough order those things came up. On regional growth, the Deputy is absolutely right that the east has been a perennial problem, especially around the Dublin area. The first thing the census says is the population has gone up in every county. In our view, some of that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, in a good way. People were allowed work from home. That has allowed people to do good jobs with Dublin-level salaries while living down the country. That has been a good thing.

I hasten to add we have not heard anything advanced in Westminster which suggests that this is going to happen yet. However, there is a narrative in the UK about a bonfire of red tape and withdrawal from EU legislation, and there is a very political element to that at the moment. That would obviously impact on us, in the first instance, around the working time directive. Consider the average 48-hour week and max 60-hour week and what we refer to as man-in-van or blue-collar services, which are in exceptionally high demand at the moment between construction and the green economy with insulation and so on. Members can imagine how a local business would be severely disadvantaged were a business, notwithstanding our fraternal relationships across the Border, was able to lawfully under UK law work someone 60, 65 or 70 hours a week doing construction services down here. It would have obvious implications for us.

We do not have a membership structure in Northern Ireland, though we have businesses with offices there. We have good relations with the Federation of Small Business, FSB, in Northern Ireland.

We also have a European footprint, SMEunited. I am delighted to say that FSB UK has a representative in SMEunited. Despite the fact that the UK is not in the European Union, FSB in the UK sees the future of British small businesses in the EU. It wants to maintain trade relationships. Its policy representative discussed with us setting up a standing committee to consider how we are going to manage imports in particular. The British have avoided the issue of inbound freight under the TCA and the Windsor Framework by having the barriers up for the past three years. We understand that will draw to a close in the next six months although we have not seen the fine detail as to how that will happen. That is far less the case in respect of Northern Ireland as long as the Windsor Framework arrangements remain in place. However, anyone who is exporting directly to Great Britain may have an issue and we do not want to see those arise. I hope I have covered the questions.