Enda Kenny pledges to lobby only Irish people in UK over Brexit

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has promised to lobby only Irish people in the UK to vote to remain in the EU as the Brexit campaign enters its final weeks.

"It is not for anybody to lecture" to the British people on how to vote, Mr Kenny said at a conference in Dublin on Brexit.

“It is our duty to inform them” so they are acquainted with the consequences.

Mr Kenny affirmed that Ireland will remain in the EU irrespective of the outcome of the UK referendum on EU membership on June 23rd.

He said that he and Government ministers, who plan to travel to the UK in the final weeks of the Brexit campaign, will only focus on convincing Irish people in the UK, who amount to almost one million people.

“We would see the UK leaving the EU as a considerable concern because successive economic studies show that the impact on Ireland would be proportionately greater than on other EU member states,” Mr Kenny said.

He said the most credible economic assessments conclude that Brexit could erode the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1 and 5 per cent.

Every 1 per cent decrease in UK GDP can normally be expected to result in a decrease of 0.3 per cent in Irish GDP, he said, citing research from Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

“We can argue all day about what new arrangements could be put in place after a Brexit and how long that would take,” Mr Kenny said.

“However no alternative arrangement will be better than the one we have: a single market and seamless flows of goods, services, capital and people,” he said, noting trade between the two countries sustained approximately 200,000 jobs.

In the run-up to the June 23rd referendum, the Fine Gael leader said he intended to make a number of visits to Britain and Northern Ireland.

“I will also be asking a number of ministers to visit Britain during this time to reach out to Irish citizens living there; to engage with friends of Ireland and the wider business community who have an interest in British-Irish economic cooperation,” he said.

Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary, who is advocating for the UK to remain in the union, said he hopes that polling will be close in the final stages so as to “motivate the more sensible people to get off their backsides” and lobby for continued membership.

While he said that a UK exit could result in an economic hit to the country’s economy and a near-term “run” on the sterling, he said that both would recover over the near term. Indeed, he said that immediate sterling weakness against the euro on the back of a vote to exit the EU would be reversed as a “queue” of other member counties seek to leave the union.

He discounted suggestions that his involvement on the “stay” campaign, as an Irishman, would annoy many voters, saying Ryanair has a big interest in the matter as its British business is much bigger than that in Ireland.