Arthur Cox and A&L Goodbody have together advised on 24 merger and acquisition deals this year, the Irish Independent reports.

According to data compiled by Thomson Reuters, the value of M&A activity with Irish involvement was hit almost €32 billion, down on €32.9 billion over the same period in 2015.

Arthur Cox has advised on 14 deals with a combined value of €26.5 billion while A&L Goodbody has advised on 10 deals with a value of €26.7 billion.

Brian O’Gorman, managing partner at Arthur Cox, told the Irish Independent: “I would characterise 2016 as less busy in M&A than 2015, but probably more like a normal year. 2015 was abnormal in a good way. It was extraordinarily busy.”

Mr O’Gorman added: “I’m not certain Brexit is going to have any material impact on M&A activity.

“I think in Ireland you have to differentiate between the domestic M&A market and the international market.

“The domestic M&A market has been quietly rebounding for a number of years and we’ve started to see reasonable levels of activity in our domestic M&A market and we’ve also started to see a lot of our largest domestic corporates doing a lot of deals abroad, like CRH and Paddy Power and others. So that’s a reasonably positive story.

“It’s been on a positive trend since 2012.”