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May
said this week that Britain would not remain a full member of
the European Union's customs union, potentially meaning a
tighter border between the British province of Northern Ireland
and the Irish Republic, which will be Britain's only land
frontier with the EU once it leaves the bloc.
However, May has pledged to find a practical solution to
preserving a common travel area between Britain and Ireland that
predates their EU membership, while also limiting immigration.
Asked if this would make customs controls likely along a border
that 30,000 people cross each day to go to work, Noonan told
Reuters: "I don't think so and it's far too early to say."
"If you look at Mrs May's speech, she committed to the free
travel area (between Ireland and the UK). She wasn't as strong
on what she would like from the customs union; she said it might
be associate membership," Noonan said in an interview on the
sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday.
"In other words, she opened up a negotiating space around the
customs union and it is where that lands that will decide
whether goods have to be checked on the border. But a lot of
this can be done electronically now and it wouldn't necessarily
mean a hard border."
Ireland's economy is widely considered at being most at risk
from the departure of its key trading partner, but Noonan said
trade data suggested there was no immediate impact and he
expected an economic growth rate of "around 3.5 percent" to
continue into the early 2020s.
In its most recent forecasts in October, Noonan's department
said that gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 3.5 percent
predicted for this year would slow to 2.8 percent by 2020 and
2.6 percent in 2021.
Noonan, who along with Prime Minister Enda Kenny is meeting
senior executives in Davos to explore potential investment into
Ireland, said Dublin had received around 100 "hard inquiries"
from financial firms considering moving operations post-Brexit.
He said he was not concerned that President-elect Donald Trump
could attack U.S. companies that continue to invest in Ireland
and that there was no clear evidence of firms putting off
investment while they await details of Trump's tax plans.
"There's a very strong pipeline of American investors coming
into Ireland... now whether hidden in the statistics there are
companies that are holding back slightly, I wouldn't know yet."
(Writing by Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Editing by Alexander
Smith)
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