Ireland Spending ‘Very Significant Amount’ on Potential No-Deal Brexit

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Ireland is “preparing for every eventuality” around Brexit and spending a “very significant amount of money” to prepare for a no-deal outcome while staying upbeat about the potential for a deal, said Irish Minister for International Development Ciarán Cannon.

“I remain confident -- I’m the eternal optimist,” Cannon told Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank meetings in Fiji. He said he expects that the U.K. government will find that an “orderly withdrawal” is “the only way to move forward” for the health of Ireland, the U.K., and all of Europe.

In the meantime, Irish policy makers are offering guidance, especially to small- and medium-sized enterprises and farmers who would be disproportionately hit by a no-deal Brexit, Cannon said.

At the ADB meetings, Ireland opened up a fund of $13 million over six years to work with Pacific Island states in order to build resilience against climate change, said Cannon. He noted that as a small island nation itself, “we want to reach out and support small island states in this part of the world.”

Ireland’s own economy is “booming” and reversing a brain drain that occurred in the wake of the last financial crisis, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michelle Jamrisko in Singapore at mjamrisko@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Karthikeyan Sundaram, Malcolm Scott

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