Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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632. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if her Department has identified the sectors most vulnerable to divergence of standards in the context of Brexit; if she has estimated the impact on each sector; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25413/17]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union will have a significant impact on our economy and I have tasked my Department with making Brexit our number one priority. Central to this approach, is understanding those impacts, positive and negative, across all policy areas of my Department and at a sectoral level.

In this context, my Department has conducted a risk assessment of the potential impacts of Brexit across policy areas which has fed into the national level assessment led by the Department of Taoiseach. My Department has been working with enterprise development agencies to mitigate risks and maximise opportunities.

In order for me, as Minister with responsibility for supporting business across all sectors, to develop any initiative to support businesses that are impacted by Brexit, I have taken every opportunity to hear the views of sectors and companies. I have met with a wide range of representative organisations. In addition, my Department held a large stakeholder engagement event in Carrick-on-Shannon in January to hear the views of all stakeholders.

In terms of our future trading relationships, our absolute preference is to maintain the closest possible trading relationship based on a level playing field between the UK and the EU, including Ireland.  The EU Guidelines state that the EU welcomes and shares the UK’s desire for a close partnership in the future.

In regard to standards, the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) provides Ireland with the components necessary for an effective trading infrastructure for products and services to be developed, traded, and relied on nationally and around the world. This infrastructure of Certification, Standards and Agreement (building products and processes), also contributes positively to decisions on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), where, again, organisations rely on, a developed standards and conformity assessment infrastructure, to achieve their objectives, such as the medical devices sector.

The NSAI has informed me that Britain may well continue to play an active part in the European standardisation system post-Brexit. Membership of the European Standards Bodies - CEN, CENELEC and ETSI – is not confined to EU member states. In the case of CEN and CENELEC, which operate a National Standards Body (NSB) membership model, 34 countries are directly represented, including Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Turkey, Serbia, FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).  So Britain may, in practice, still conform to European Norms, the European standards developed in Brussels.

NSAI understand that BSI, the British Standards Institution, has striven to reassure its stakeholders that BSI intends to maintain membership of European Standards Institutions.  For most sectors of British industry and society that would seem to be the most advantageous policy since it effectively minimises cost-increasing variances from the European Norms. In addition - European Norms are generally close to global ISO and IEC standards, which would still be followed in the UK market.

That said, Britain has always maintained a library of indigenous British Standards which supplement the European Norms. It is eminently possible that Britain might place more weight on indigenous British standards in certain sectors. However, that might not be a huge problem for Irish industry in those sectors. Irish industry would tend to have a good knowledge of British standards in their particular sector because of historical political links and traditionally strong trading links with the British market.

It is difficult to say definitively what sectors would be most vulnerable to pressures for divergent standards.  However, many observers would say that the British sector most likely to diverge from the European model is the Construction sector, which has traditionally been considered to be slowest to embrace common solutions across Europe.  The Irish Construction sector has close ties with the British Construction sector – so this may not be such a threat to Irish construction sector companies – indeed it could perhaps be an opportunity.

One issue for Irish stakeholders, in the event of divergent British Standards, would be continuing involvement in the standardisation process which would revise and update these distinct British Standards. The NSAI has an active Joint Cooperation Agreement with BSI, the British Standards Institution. This Joint Cooperation Agreement is under review at the moment.  There could be a need to strengthen this bi-lateral agreement if standards divergence were to become an issue.

My Department, working in close cooperation with the NSAI, is monitoring the situation and will continue to monitor developments as Britain goes through the Brexit negotiation process.

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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633. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of applications made to date in 2017 for the be prepared grant; the number of drawdowns of this grant; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25414/17]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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634. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the number of businesses that have completed the Enterprise Ireland Brexit scorecard; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25415/17]