Dear member,

After months of speculation, Article 50 has been triggered. With formal negotiations set to begin, I am very pleased to provide you with a comprehensive and practical new Ibec guide for managing Brexit. It sets out the potential implications for companies, and includes a toolkit that will help you assess the risks and prepare a response. It looks at the likely impact on key sectors, but also at how Brexit may affect currency transactions, supply chains, contracts, financing and the labour force, among other issues. All member companies have received a copy by post and it is also available at www.ibec.ie/brexit.

The next major piece of work which is underway at Ibec is the development of a strong policy position paper for the Irish Government and the European Union for Irish business on the many, varied and complex issues which must be addressed as part of the negotiations which I will share with you in our next edition of Agenda.

Ibec's work to ensure a positive reputation for the Irish business model took us stateside last month when an Ibec delegation met with a number of representatives from the new US administration, including Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (equivalent to Ireland's Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform) and Stephen Moore, Trump's campaign economic adviser. Our objective was to demonstrate the substance that underpins the Irish business model to US stakeholders and to deal with any reputational challenges that have arisen for business in Ireland.

Meetings took place in Washington DC, as well as in New York, where an Ibec Board meeting was held, followed by a major Summit hosted jointly with the Ireland-US Council. Ireland is now seen as a competitor to the US on corporation tax and our dialogue primarily centred on the US tax reform agenda, including a cut in the corporate tax rate, a lower rate for repatriated offshore earnings, and the introduction of a Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) - the BAT would present by far the greatest challenge for Irish business. A BAT would be equivalent to imposing tariffs on imports while subsidising exports. While it is certain that some US policies will be challenging for business in Ireland, we at Ibec will continue to build on this work during the year ahead and on our efforts to communicate our message of substance to both domestic and international audiences.

Ibec has been calling out government for some time on the lack of ambition around investment in public infrastructure and, how its new arbitrary debt to GDP ratio target of 45% will unnecessarily reduce the availability of money at a time when our investment programme is core to our ability to compete, as I argue in an article in this edition.

As part of our lobbying effort for government not to lose this opportunity, we recently held a roundtable with Minister Simon Coveney. This provided an opportunity for business leaders to vocalise their frustrations around the lack of investment, and Ibec is now concluding a comprehensive submission on the National Planning Framework which we will launch within the next week.

As always, your feedback on these and any other issues are most welcome.


Danny