Last week, there were three interesting Brexit-related events.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny gave an excellent summary of where Ireland stood in relation to EU membership and Britain leaving the EU. Alan Dukes, as a former minister for finance and agriculture, had an excellent article in The Sunday Business Post, while IBEC, the industry representative body, launched a first-class report with a lot of new information. Not surprisingly, Enda Kenny and Alan Dukes were on the same page when it came to the absolute national priority of remaining a full member of the EU and then to get the best deal possible. Dukes was right to point out in his article that in the post-war trade deals done with Britain in both 1948 and 1963, Ireland was in a weak bargaining position because of the huge difference in the size of the two countries and we did badly. For anyone to consciously urge a return to such an unequal relationship is baffling.

IBEC launched its special report looking for special agribusiness support based on two key points.

The first is the general acknowledgement that the treaty governing state aid rules allows for exceptional aid “to remedy a severe disturbance in the economy of a member state”. It is very clear that this is what the British exit from the EU threatens. The figures for various Irish food and agri products’ dependence on the UK market are clear and well known. What I had not realised was just how much Dublin is in such a different position from the rest of the country. The IBEC analysis lists the relative wealth of each of the regions in the country relative to the rest of the 1,331 recognised EU’s regional areas.

The Dublin region is the 33rd most prosperous region in the entire EU but, not surprisingly, only 1.4% of the working population works in the agri-food and beverages sector. On the other hand, the border and midlands region is 990th out of the 1,331 EU regions and has over 10% of its workforce in the agri-food and beverages sector.

It is clear from the IBEC analysis that this whole new problem of Britain leaving the EU has a serious regional dimension. If there is to be any effort to steer some economic activity away from a Dublin which threatens to overwhelm the country, a new national approach is needed and a focus given to the necessity for regional development. Food production and agribusiness will have to be central in such a regional development plan.