Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

I thank the Deputy for raising those questions and I am happy to comment on some of them. At an overall level, what I see as the big challenge for the Irish economy from Brexit is risk to our competitiveness. The benefits of the UK and all of us being in the Single Market and a customs union for a period of decades have been very substantial for business and consumers. The untangling of that, which will happen almost overnight, will bring many extra costs to doing business and, unfortunately, for the consumers and across the economy we will see that in all the logistics issues that were mentioned. As I said, we are seeing a number of our companies derisking in opting for a direct shipping route but it all depends on the nature of the product. Time to market times become longer in most cases when opting for a direct shipping route. For some of the more perishable goods and depending on value and complexity of supply chains across the UK into EU, that will not always be possible. Where companies can do it they are seeking to do it and may have already done it. All these measures are bringing additional costs and that will be one of the underlying concerns for business.

On the competitiveness point, we are concerned we have not been able to progress an export credit insurance scheme, which we currently see in pretty much most other European countries. We are not sure what the blockage is but it is a missing part of our artillery to help companies that need to diversify into new markets. We would urgently ask the support of this committee to bring about that change of policy in government and get an export credit insurance scheme delivered.