Almost half Ireland’s financial services industry leaders believe that the United Kingdom will be back in the European Union by 2040, according to a survey by law firm Mason Hayes & Curran.
The survey was carried out at the firm’s Financial Services Insights event at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, and online, which attracted c.400 industry executives.
The event focused on the current geopolitical volatility and its potential impacts on the Irish and global economy.
Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh delivered the keynote address.
Ganesh was a research fellow at Policy Exchange, the right-wing London think tank, and is the author of George Osborne: The Austerity Chancellor.
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“Lots of certainties have been dashed in recent years, from peace in Europe to the permanence of low inflation, and I suspect that much of what we believe today won’t age much better,” Ganesh told the audience.
“If you told me the UK was substantially in the single market by 2030 I wouldn’t doubt it. The main cause of Brexit was free movement, and that really meant the inflow of people from Central and Eastern Europe. But in 2022 the economic gap between the Balkans and the UK has narrowed significantly.”
The law firm’s survey also found that four out of ten respondents feel that continued high inflation is most likely to trigger a global recession, with one in three of the view that elevated energy prices are a key inflation driver.
Russia’s land war in Europe and potential conflict between China and Taiwan are viewed as the main medium-term threats to global political stability, though only one in eight of the attendees are concerned about the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president of the United States in 2025.
William Carmody, who heads up Mason Hayes & Curran’s financial services unit, told attendees: “As a small open economy, Ireland is particularly sensitive to developments in the rest of the world.
“While we have more questions than answers, we are closely monitoring developments and risks both in terms of geopolitical outcomes and their knock-on macro-financial effects.”
Photo: William Carmody (left), Mason Hayes partner Sarah Cloonan, and Janan Ganesh. (Pic: Jason Clarke)
