The Chairperson of the Ireland Canada Business Association has said the election of Mark Carney as the new Prime Minister of Canada was very positive for Ireland.
The former Bank of England governor took 86% of votes cast to beat former finance minister Chrystia Freeland in a contest in which just under 152,000 party members voted.
He will succeed Justin Trudeau as prime minister at a tumultuous time in Canada, which is in the midst of a trade war with the United States.
Three of Mr Carney’s four grandparents hail from Aughagower in Co Mayo.
Dr Deirdre Giblin said Canada had become an ally to Ireland around the time of the recession.
“It’s very much to do with the friendship shown to us at the time of the economic crash,” she told RTÉ’s News at One.
“There’s chemistry between three people at the heart of this story, which was Jim Flaherty, who was then the Canadian Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, our own Finance Minister at the time, and Mark Carney.
“There was a lot of soft influencing and tougher influencing happening at the time and those conversations and meeting with the IMF, the European Bank, the World Bank, and there was deals that needed to be got over the line for Ireland … Mark Carney was part of designing that with Michael Noonan and Jim Flaherty and then part of socialising that whole idea with the people who were the influencers and needed to make the decision.”
Dr Giblin said the trade relationship between Ireland and Canada was a lot stronger than many people realised.
“We have a relationship that went from around three billion between exports and imports to around five billion, updated in the last few days. We see a relationship that in Ireland, what we export, and it is very much us exporting over to Canada, is around pharmaceuticals and organic chemicals,” she said.
“What we are bringing in from Canada is cereals, food stuff and then quite a lot of mixed smaller type products, but then the trading services relationship is huge.
“The whole financial sector, the law, regtech, fintech, all of that, it’s very, very sizeable and there is an opportunity to absolutely double that, particularly in a time of trade diversification.”
