Britain warned Ireland not to launch an “aggressive and opportunistic” campaign to steal business from the City of London in the wake of Brexit vote, a senior figure in Ireland’s Investment and Development Agency (IDA) has revealed.

Kieran Donoghue, the IDA’s head of strategy and public policy, said the friendly warning had been delivered over dinner by the former UK ambassador to Ireland soon after last year’s vote to leave.

“The ambassador said ‘you have a job to do, so our working assumption is that you will do your job, but it’s the way you do your job,” recalled Mr Donoghue in an interview with The Telegraph.

“He said if there is any aggressive or public marketing of Ireland in London, or it was seen to be an opportunistic grab for a piece of the industry, he said ‘you can imagine how that will play out in Downing Street or the Treasury in London.”

The British request to tread carefully has emerged as Mr Donoghue confirmed that Ireland had received inquiries from more than 80 UK-based financial institutions to relocate a portion of their operations to Dublin after Brexit.