Dr. Stephen Kinsella:

The impact is being felt. I work at the University of Limerick and we are successful at getting in European research and development money through Horizon 2020 and its successor Horizon Europe. We have colleagues with whom we work in Oxford, Cambridge and the University of Warwick. These are very fine, world class academics, none of whom is part of the projects that we are putting in right now for 2020 and 2021. That is a good, simple, concrete example that tens of millions of euros that would go to the UK economy that simply is not going. Even if the UK turned around and said there will be no Brexit at all, that money still will not go to there. That is a permanent decrease in the UK's GDP. It is a small but perfect example of what I mean.

If I was advising the Minister for Finance, I would be far more specific about the nature of sectoral bailouts. In the event of even a soft Brexit, as Mr. McCarthy said, there are agrifood producers who will be walloped. I would love for there to be comfort for people in those businesses and sectors that they will be looked after and will be okay. There is one line in the summer economic statement that says the Government will have a look at bailing some people out. I want far more detail on that and I would disclose more on that. I presume that the good officials in the Department of Finance have those sectoral bailout plans built and ready to go and I am sure committee members are privy to them but, if they do not, I would apply shoe leather to areas of their bodies to ensure they get designed.

These plans, again, cannot be done in five minutes. It takes time to develop them properly.