Mr. Simon McKeever:

Yes, definitely. The risk is definitely upwards. When one looks at what happens next year, we will have all these elections in Europe. There will be greater volatility in the currency because it will not be all about the UK and what it is trying to do. There will probably be a very loud row between the UK and Europe but many politicians in France, the Netherlands and Germany will have to focus on politics in their backyard and I think this will generate a lot of noise. It is euro-sterling so they are looking at the UK economy and what is going on in Europe. One may well have increased volatility. As one goes through the Italian banking piece, there will a referendum in December and the Dutch election will be in March. It is quite difficult to say exactly where this is going. The risk is definitely to the upside. The Houses of Parliament in the UK could have a debate on it, so I think there will be extreme volatility.

We have an agency that is focused on getting foreign direct investment into the country, so it is out there selling our wares all around the world attracting non-Irish companies to the country. We have an agency that is all about enterprise development and some exporting. Is anybody talking to all these companies we all mentioned - the ones thinking about moving jobs to the UK and thinking about displacing the smaller suppliers into them ? Is anybody talking to the guys with the ten or 20 jobs to help them to keep jobs in the country? What supports are we providing? We are throwing money at the bigger companies to persuade them to come to Ireland and are certainly supporting the exporting companies but what are we doing to keep those jobs in the different regions around the country? I would back up what was said earlier. The bigger business people are saying this to my face but there is no way they will go on the public record to say this. It is a very active thing that is going on at the moment.