On Monday of this week, I went along, with about 300 others, to get a real handle on how the British withdrawal from the EU would affect Ireland.

There were two high-powered panels – the first was of the three former taoisigh – John Bruton, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen. The second comprised Catherine Day, the former Secretary General of the European Commission, the most senior Commission official, the former president of the Commission José Manuel Barroso and Dominic Grieve, a conservative member of the Westminster Parliament and former Attorney General.

Not surprisingly, NI featured heavily in the discussions and perhaps surprisingly, so did agriculture but I didn’t end up reassured on either issue.

The other area that struck me was the declaration by Barroso, now the occupier of the post of chair of Goldman Sachs International, previously held by Peter Sutherland, that while Brexit was important for Ireland, it was not occupying to any great extent, the thoughts of other EU member states, especially the major players like Germany, France, Italy .

On agriculture, there was an acknowledgement that there was a major problem for Ireland unless there was the very softest of Brexits with UK membership of the single market and customs continuing by another name. But if that didn’t happen, none of the participants even considered whether a special Irish compensatory package could be on the table and the UK participant dismissed the question of a border down the Irish Sea as “simply not going to happen”.

Bertie Ahern said agriculture was the biggest issue but no paper had been presented on the subject by the UK and nobody on either panel wanted to deal with the issue in any real way.

We are a long way from an agri solution, though interestingly, I briefly attended a different event last week where a well-informed American speaker said that if the UK wanted to do a trade deal with the US, agriculture would have to be part of the package. I have no doubt that Brazil will say exactly the same.

If Britain is allowed to do third country deals, then Irish agriculture better diversify as quickly as possible. China is a useful start.