THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE IRISH EXAMINER 13th JULY 2019

We generally tend to be very critical of the Irish political system and frequently criticise our very diluted form of democracy. However, the events of the past two years and particularly the past week in the UK make the Irish political system look positively sane and sensible. If somebody had told me three years ago that the UK political system could turn out to be so dysfunctional, I would not have believed it. But dysfunctional it has turned out to be and since last weekend it has turned in to farcical comedy. To lose one senior cabinet member is unfortunate, but to lose two is downright careless.
Last Friday night I was somewhat surprised that the Prime Minister had managed to get the backing of the Cabinet for what is in effect a ‘soft Brexit’, but it did turn out too good to be true. On Saturday morning the consensus was that she had achieved a significant victory over the ‘hard Brexiteers’, but the subsequent resignations of the Brexit secretary David Davis and the foreign secretary Boris Johnson showed just how these two ‘hard Brexiteers’ viewed the ‘semi Brexit’ that Theresa May announced on Friday night. The battle is still far from won.
It is still impossible to call how this saga will unfold such are the extremely complicated and unpredictable politics of the situation. In some ways, Theresa May’s situation looks incredibly vulnerable, but she still does have the backing of the majority of the Cabinet for the softer form of Brexit that she obviously desires. If she is faced with a leadership challenge and loses to somebody like Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg, an early general election would seem inevitable and it would be hard to see the Conservatives win that election. Even if the Conservatives were brought back into power under somebody such as Jacob or Boris, it is not clear that they would have sufficient support to engineer the hard Brexit that they desire.
At the end of the day, pragmatism and national self-interest seem to be holding sway at the moment and this was certainly reflected in the approach that the Prime Minister adopted last Friday. Sensible people seem to realise that walking away from a certain market such as the EU would not be a very wise thing to do, particularly given how uncertain the creation of other markets would be. The current antics of Donald Trump in relation to free trade and protectionism should and probably is convincing sensible people that the notion of the UK doing all sorts of free trade deals with the US would not be as easy as it sounds. The bottom line is that free trade is good for economic growth and economic welfare. Walking away from free trade in the EU and trying to do new trade deals in a world that is shifting away from free trade might not be a sensible strategy to pursue. This view seems to be driving official UK policy towards Brexit at the moment.
If a general election were to be held and if Labour were to win, which would appear to be the more likely outcome, we would then be faced with the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. Although Corbyn built his political career on an avowedly anti-EU perspective, it is likely that as Prime Minister he would drive the UK towards a soft version of Brexit, much along the lines of what Theresa May announced last Friday night, the exact detail of which will be contained in the impending White Paper. Basically, Theresa May wants a situation where the UK has full regulatory alignment with the EU for goods and agricultural products. This would in effect treat the UK and the EU as a single customs territory.
From an Irish perspective, what was announced last weekend would be the next best outcome to no Brexit at all. However, we cannot take anything for granted because anything is still possible but my long-held gut instinct that pragmatism would eventually win out remains my central view. Certainly, the financial markets remain quite relaxed despite the high-profile resignations and sterling is certainly not pricing in a hard Brexit yet. Hopefully, sanity will prevail.

This Article Appeared in The Irish Examiner 29th June 2018

Last weekend we passed the second anniversary of the monumental decision of the UK electorate to exit the EU and we are now less than nine months away from ‘B-Day’. The intervening period has seen the growth of a major industry around the subject. Every business in this country and indeed in the UK either has or should be considering the potential implications of the impending debacle; thousands of hours of management time have been devoted to it; thousands of reports have been prepared on the subject; the political system in the EU has been forced to hand over an inordinate amount of time to the topic; media here and the UK has been dominated by it; and it has exposed a most amazing level of political dysfunctionality in the UK. More than anything else relating to Brexit, it is the latter than has come as the biggest shock to me. The behaviour of politicians such as Boris Johnson, David Davis, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Jeremy Corbyn has been quite simply astounding and pretty unbelievable.
It all makes one wonder what we would have been talking about over the past couple of years if the UK electorate had done the sensible thing and voted to stay in the EU? I have believed from the beginning, and I become even more convinced by the day, that the decision to walk away from such a huge market in return for very dubious benefits, makes no economic sense whatsoever. Indeed, the evidence of the damage that has been done to UK economy in the intervening period is becoming more palpable.
What is perhaps most disconcerting, is the fact that we are no clearer today about the eventual outcome than we were two years ago. It is still possible to make cogent arguments for any possible outcome. Uncertainty still reigns.
Based on what we know at the moment, the UK will formally leave the EU on March 29th next year and will then have a transition period that will end on December 31st 2020. During that transition period, the UK will have access to the single European market but will be subject to the rules and regulations of that market without having any influence over those rules and regulations.
Despite all of the confusion and uncertainty, the only really important question to be answered is the nature of the trading relationship that will exist between the UK and the EU from January 1st 2021 onwards. The answer is that nobody knows at this stage and anything is possible.
UK business did not play an adequate role in the run up to the referendum and never really highlighted its concerns ahead of the vote. However, it is interesting in recent days that some big names have started to make noise. Airbus has stated that a ‘no-deal’ scenario would threaten its investment in the UK for the very obvious reason that any border delays or trade tariffs would damage its business. Airbus employs 14,000 people directly in the UK. In a similar vein, BMW has called for clarity on future customs arrangements and has warned that it would shut UK plants if the supply chain is disrupted by Brexit. It employs 8,000 workers in the UK. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) warned that investment in new cars and plants in the UK has weakened significantly and that 850,000 jobs directly and indirectly employed in the sector are at risk from a ‘hard Brexit’.
The issue for all of these businesses is that in the event of no deal and a hard Brexit, their supply chains would be damaged and this would damage profitability. If necessary, they will vote with their feet as they should do if they are to act in the best interests of their shareholders.
The reaction of the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was interesting and very telling. He basically described the warnings from Airbus as completely inappropriate and that the Government should ignore ‘siren voices’. We have also seen the re-emergence of the old chestnut about the extra funding that will be available for the NHS once it leaves the EU, but the reality is that the damage to growth from a hard Brexit would do so much damage to the UK economy that there would inevitably be less money available for the NHS and other public services. One could not make it up.
Shortly, the UK cabinet will meet in Chequers to agree on a white paper on the UK’s plans for a future relationship with the EU. The problem for the Prime Minister will be to bring both factions together. Her task is not to be envied, putting it mildly, but it is very clear that she still wants as soft a form of Brexit as possibly. Here in Ireland we should hope that she gets her way.

This Article appeared in the Irish Examiner June 15th 2018

Last week I wrote a pretty upbeat piece on the Irish economy, with a strong focus on ongoing positive trends in two key components of the indigenous economy, namely Tourism and the Agri-Food sectors. Predictably, I got a negative response from certain quarters, with one in particular claiming that it read like ‘a PR piece to encourage inward investment and that as usual there is a certain group in society doing well and feeling positive, but far too many are being left behind again’.
Difficult to know how to respond to that accusation without coming across as callous and cruel. A point to note is that I did not once mention inward investment and my focus was very much on the domestic side of the economy and on the growth that is being experienced in some key domestic components. This is difficult to argue with.
It is a fact that the reality of life in every developed country in the world is that some people will do better than others, due to factors such as educational attainment, social background, the quality of employment, and the willingness to work hard and take risks. Those with higher levels of educational attainment generally tend to get higher quality and better paid jobs, which in turn is often heavily influenced by social background. It is also generally the case that the harder one is willing to work and the more risks one is prepared to take, the better off one will be. I use the term generally, as it is obvious that this is not always the case.
The challenge for policy makers is to ensure that those who do not get the best opportunities to improve themselves, who are unable to work, or who suffer from some other disadvantage are helped to the greatest extent possible. Ireland does this quite well. The country has a very progressive tax system, in the sense that the more one earns, the more one pays in tax. The proceeds of taxation payments are then used to fund a pretty generous and progressive social protection system, and also to fund public services. People can moan forever about the nature of our economy and our society, but the truth is that if we do not have economic growth and if we do not have people in society doing well, the resources to fund social expenditure and public services will not be generated.
I did not and would not argue for one moment that Ireland does not still have many problems, it does. The lack of sufficient housing and under-funded health, education, and law and order immediately spring to mind. It is a fact that having experienced the most significant economic shock in generations back in 2007, there are still significant legacy issues to be addressed, but at least with the strong momentum in the economy, we will be given the opportunity to address those issues. Without growth, very little would be possible.
Thankfully, as I pointed out last week, we are seeing a lot of growth coming through and the latest data releases show clearly that the good news is continuing to pour forth.
This week, the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) suggested that it is having a very strong first half and that the investments already approved so far this year will lead to the creation of over 11,300 jobs, which is marginally ahead of the first half of last year. The IDA is continuing to attract strong overseas interest in its investment proposition, and that is unambiguously good news. Of course, there are challenges and risks involved here, but that is the nature of economic and business life. Managing the risks in a prudent manner is key.
It is not correct to suggest that a rising tide will lift all boats, but a rising tide is still preferable to a falling one. I firmly believe that the best thing that is currently happening in the economy relates to labour market developments. The level of unemployment declined by 15,600 in the 12-month period to May and the unemployment rate has fallen to 5.8 per cent of the labour force. Since the low point of the labour market in January 2012, the number of people unemployed has declined by 217,300 from 356,300 to 139,000. Of course, we can argue with the quality of some of the employment being created, but the trend should be welcomed by any sensible person with an open mind.

This article first appeared in Irish Examiner 8th June 2018

In the midst of some signs of an easing of Eurozone growth so far in 2018, it is interesting to observe that almost all data releases are providing a very upbeat assessment of what is happening in the Irish economy.

In the midst of the economic crisis some years back, there were many prepared to argue that the Irish economy would not emerge from the morass in a generation and, indeed, a number of commentators made a strong media name for themselves by preaching an incredibly negative narrative about Ireland’s prospects.

I never accepted this narrative as I always believed that it is not the nature of the Irish to sit back and accept the apparently inevitable.

However, I have been taken somewhat aback at the speed and magnitude of the economic recovery.

Ireland has certainly defied the conventional view in a very positive manner. It says a lot about the Irish mentality and about the spirit of entrepreneurship that permeates the national psyche. Long may it continue.

In the midst of the crisis, policymakers took some very difficult fiscal policy decisions and a lot of pain was felt by a lot of people.

This obviously helped put the public finances back on track and helped restore international confidence in the economy much more quickly than anybody would have anticipated.

However, I think most importantly, some strong and sensible strategic decisions were taken to ensure that the two most important indigenous sectors — tourism and agri-food — would provide the pathway for the emergence of the economy from a very difficult place.

Indeed, that has turned out to be the case and both sectors have played a key role in driving the economy forward.

In 2017 for example, 9.93 million overseas visitors came to Ireland, which was the highest level in our history.

Data released by the CSO last week showed that the strong tourism performance has continued into this year.

In the first four months of the year, 2.82m overseas visitors came into the country, which is 7.3% ahead of the same period in 2017.

Visitor numbers from Britain are up 1.5% and accounted for 39.7% of total overseas visitor numbers.

The North American market expanded by 13.6%, and visitor numbers from the Rest of Europe increased by 12.3%.

These are incredibly impressive visitor numbers and certainly suggest that just as Bord Bia is doing a superb job promoting the Irish agri-food sector, Tourism Ireland and Fáilte Ireland are doing a superb job promoting Irish tourism.

The recent relative strength of sterling is good news for Ireland, but the more recent strengthening of the dollar is particularly good news.

When the dollar was sliding significantly during 2017, fears about the impact this currency move might have on the attractiveness of the Irish market for US visitors were justified.

On the agri-food side, the uncertainty presented by Brexit is obviously of key concern, but it is good to see that Irish policymakers are taking a very proactive approach to developing new more exotic markets like China and South Korea. The sector is still doing very well.

The great thing about the contribution of tourism and the agri-food sector is that they both have a strong regional and rural footprint, and both have a strong domestic value-added content.

In other words, the inputs into both sectors are very much domestic, both are labour intensive and leakages are not significant.

All in all, Ireland now finds itself in a very strong place and the sense of optimism and enthusiasm is very real and very positive.

Regardless of one’s views on the recent referendum, the sense of enthusiasm and optimism it has generated amongst young people, in particular, is a joy to behold.

Socially, Ireland is now becoming a very progressive and outward looking country and this just serves to feed into the very positive trends on the economic front.

It is good to be Irish at the moment and it would be nice to see an optimistic narrative swamping the negative narrative that has been so prevalent over the past decade.

Ireland is moving forward, and long may it continue.