Ms Patricia King:

If we look at the economy as a whole and divide it into the manufacturing and productivity side and the services side, about 230,000 jobs are in what the CSO calls the productive sector. That ranges across agri-food, chemical-pharma and wood, to name a few. More accurately there are about 209,000 jobs in the sector, and with ancillary jobs on top of that the figure is nearer to 300,000. Taking the whole services sector into account we are talking about 600,000 to 700,000 jobs. We can then look at the import and export business that is done with the UK. In 2015, the CSO figures showed an export level of about €13.7 billion and an import level of about €16.4 billion. That gives a round figure of approximately €30 billion between the two countries. The point that we have made consistently at any of the consultations that we have been invited to is that all of these jobs are underpinned by the business that these companies do domestically and abroad. If one plucks out that €30 billion export trade business with the UK we believe that any trade barrier put in place in the absence of any agreement between either the EU and the UK or a specific agreement between Ireland and the UK - we do not know what will come out of these negotiations - could have very serious consequences for those jobs. It is probably inappropriate to say that if our trade drops by 5% then we will lose 5% of jobs. That is probably too course a mechanism to use. My judgment is, having attended a number of those consultations, culminating last Friday in Dublin Castle, that there is a complete underestimation. I shared my view at the meeting in Dublin Castle at about five 3.55 p.m. when all the politicians, with the exception of one or two, and most of the other people were gone. That is how long the trade union movement had to wait to get its point across. I want to keep away from making a political point.