‘We must plan for a car crash Brexit’ AIB bank chief warns

IRELAND must plan for the ‘worst possible car-crash’ Brexit possible in the event ‘the head-bangers’ prevail, the UK-born chairman of AIB has warned.

Richard Pym warned that ‘Ultra-Brexiteers’ seemed prepared to blow up the British economy in the name of taking back control.

‘The Brexit campaign promised continued access to the single market combined with the ability to control immigration,’ he said.

‘It promised access to the customs union whilst developing additional trade agreements outside the European arrangements. And it promised a bonfire of regulations without spelling out a single regulation to scrap.’

Mr Pym added sarcastically: ‘Cake was going to be in copious supply.’

He said: ‘We must plan for the worst possible car-crash Brexit if the headbanger Brexiteers who are determined to push for a hard Brexit get their way.’

But he warned that a British government without a majority in Parliament ‘does not have the bandwidth to make all the policy decisions to become independent of the European Union. ’

The UK’s Home Office has no plans to replace Britain’s immigration system. ‘There is copious evidence that they cannot run the current one, let alone develop a new one,’ he told the AIB-organised event in Dublin yesterday.

The EU has 35 regulatory bodies which must be replaced, but nothing has been agreed and nothing is being done.

‘The British Government has now, not surprisingly, discovered they need more time and are seeking to delay the Brexit implementation,’ Mr Pym said.

‘The currency has tanked, the economy is slowing, investment is reducing, inflation is increasing, and eurozone growth now exceeds that of the UK.’

He said the ‘macabre irony’, is that the delay in implementing Brexit means the British will have to comply with EU rules that they have no say in making.

‘So much for taking back control.’