Now a good time to grasp opportunities for trade
A Mullingar-born lawyer has been elected to a highly-prestigious role – that of president of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce (BICC).
Jeanne Kelly, originally from Millmount, is a daughter of John and Florrie Kelly, and sister to Brenda (London), Ray (Tipperary) and nationally-known GAA referee Barry (Mullingar). She lives in Dublin with her husband and teenage son.
For the last year, Ms Kelly has served as vice-president of the BICC. She is also the outgoing chair of the chamber’s ICT committee, and is a founder member of the BICC, which was established in 2011 ahead of the historic visit of HM Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland and the subsequent state visit of President Michael D Higgins to Britain.
A past pupil of Presentation NS and then of Loreto College, Ms Kelly is a respected, specialist commercial lawyer and one of the founding partners of the Dublin offices of leading UK and Ireland law firm Browne Jacobson.
She has over 25 years’ experience in leading a commercial tech law practice; has advised private and public sector clients on technology, intellectual property and data privacy law and has also led data protection compliance programmes for some of Ireland’s leading corporates, as well as for multinationals with Irish operations. Jeanne also has extensive experience in large outsourcing projects, supply arrangements and intellectual asset management.
Jeanne says her aim as president of BICC will be to keep trade at the forefront of the agenda: “There is €100 billion annual trade between Ireland and the UK, which directly sustains over 600,000 jobs,” she told the Westmeath Examiner, adding that she felt truly honoured to be elected president of the BICC at a time of great change and progress in Irish, British trade and relations.
She believes it is important that relations between the two countries are developed and nurtured: “I mean, there’s still a huge amount of two-way trade between the two countries and with the whole Brexit thing we’ve had to kind of stabilise it and, I suppose, find a new way of continuing to trade well with one another.
“And then the chamber has been involved in terms of looking at the north to south axis as well. So we find it a good vehicle in which corporates who are trading north south or overseas with the UK make sure that their interests are looked after – particularly businesses in the dairy and farming sectors or any kind of food.”
In those sectors in particular, a focus is on labelling, and on the processes involved in the import-export of time-sensitive items such as foodstuffs.
Jeanne says that in the current post-Brexit and Windsor Framework era, now is a good time to grasp the vast opportunities presented for collaboration and trade across these Islands, and she believes there are further opportunities in areas such as technology, energy, sustainability, research and financial services.