Mr. Gerard Brady:

I will respond to the first two questions and Mr. Arnold Dillon will speak on the internal organisational work we are doing.

On the question of companies moving from Ireland to the United Kingdom, that is an issue that we have brought up again and again. We tend to think of inward investment but we will see many growing companies, in particular mid-cap companies in the food sector that are thinking about their next steps, that will move by acquisition, partnership or expansion into the UK. That is feedback we have been hearing loud and clear. What can one do about that? One issue is the size of the UK market, and there is nothing we can do about that apart from trying to get the best deal for the UK we can in the negotiations. Tax is a major issue, in particular around capital gains tax, and the subjects of taxation of the self-employed and taxation share options have come up.

In regard to tourism, we are doing work that we will probably publish sometime before Christmas on the impacts on rural areas. The impacts are very different depending on what region one is in. The impact on the Border region will be very different from the south east, but they will both be severely impacted. The retention of the 9% VAT rate will be a help but there will be pain, particularly in areas that were not traditional tourist areas but where there has been a great deal of recent promotion to attract tourists. The promotion of the west has been successful but it will suffer because British tourists go into tourism areas that other tourists do not visit. I think about 20% of the tourists visiting the midlands are UK-based but in Dublin, only 3% to 4% of tourist are from the UK.

We will meet all our regional committees in the next couple of weeks. We had the committees tell their experience to Deputies in the past couple of months. At a business planning level. many companies have not got very far yet. The more resources they have, the better prepared they are.

Hedging is probably the best example of it. We conducted a survey of approximately 450 companies two weeks after the result. Only 25% of exporters had cover, that is, hedging, pricing contracts, forward guidance on pricing, etc. Most of that would only last three to 12 months from the time we surveyed them. The first and second quarters of next year will see a great deal of pain. People are protected where they have pricing contracts, but they tend to be the ones who export a lot. They will have to start planning on how to deal with UK retailers in particular seeking price changes from them that will deeply affect them. An increase in redundancies in the first and second quarters of next year is our expectation. Mr. Dillon might discuss the internal aspect.