Low risk of British exit

The probability of the UK voting to leave the EU may be fairly low, but businesses on both sides of the Irish Sea are taking no chances.

Bookie Paddy Power rates the chances of the UK breaking its troubled relationship with the rest of the EU at 3-1 and says it is 1-5 (a probability of over 82%) that Britain will stay put.

The Irish Exporters Association meeting yesterday predict an even slimmer probability. It predicts a meagre 10% risk of a British exit — but does not want to take any chances at all.

It wants the Government here to strengthen UK trading links with the UK even more.

And it wants Ireland and the UK to publicise to the British public that Irish-UK trade links are not a one-way street — Ireland is after all a major importer of goods and services from Britain too.

The association acknowledges the Republic could benefit in the longer term should Britain exit, if Dublin were to attract financial investments that would otherwise have gone to the City of London.

However, the short-term dislocation would be a large price to pay, it says.

Others have warned too not just about economic dislocation if Britain were to vote to leave, but the political disruption that could be visited upon the Republic and the North.

The Institute of International and European Affairs, earlier this year assessed those risks as not insubstantial. In its book, Britain and Europe: The Endgame, it said a British exit would strip 3.6%, or about €6bn from the Republic’s huge export base if full tariff barriers were re-installed in Britain and the North.