Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 November 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Economic Impact of Brexit: Discussion (Resumed)

4:30 pm

Mr. Simon McKeever:

In respect of our statistics on our overall membership, about 30% of our membership send more than 25% of their exports to the UK. In respect of currency, I am not quite sure they do not know. I think there is an awareness that Brexit is out there and people are worried about it, certainly among our members. It is more the fact that the way we have always done this is that one year there is a particular rate but it all balances out over three or four years. There is a lack of an acute awareness that something has completely shifted in all this. It is wall-to-wall Brexit in all media. Certainly everything we are doing is very Brexit-focused. It is more a case of because we have done it like this for the past number of years, we will come around again in three or four years' time when the rate is back down to 69p or whatever it was. One gets a sense that the currency has rebased higher so one might not see 70p again. One might see 80p but not 70p. It has shifted up.