Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of our speakers for their useful contributions. We will be engaging more regularly with them in the next few months. I hope we will keep in touch with Mr. Strauss and Ms Nolan. We will finalise our report in the next couple of weeks and hope it will feed into the Action Plan for Jobs, as well as into the preparations for the budget. Some key recommendations were touched on today. We will engage with the Mr. O'Connor on the manufacturing initiative. This is an issue on which we wish to focus, as this topic has been raised in earlier presentations. I imagine we will make a recommendation to tackle that issue in our report.

I welcome Mr. Frank O'Keeffe, partner in charge, Ernst & Young; Mr. Liam Griffin, chief executive officer, Griffin Group, who is part of the Ernst & Young delegation; and Mr. Gerry Moan from the Discovery Zone. I apologise for the delay in starting and understand the delegates must leave at 4 p.m. We will try to finish by that time, but should they need to leave, that will not present a problem. As I outlined the parliamentary practice as the start of the meeting, I will take it as read. The presentation usually takes about five minutes, but the delegates may take more time if they wish to comment on what they heard in the earlier presentations. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. We hope our report on unemployment and specifically youth unemployment will feed into the Action Plan for Jobs. We are trying to highlight new ideas that are missing from key areas. I invite Mr. O'Keeffe to take the lead.