Mary White (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Mr. Whelan on his perseverance and on the exemplary work he does on behalf of the Irish Exporters Association. The association has retained its iconic members. That speaks for itself. I attend the annual dinner of the IEA and I am over-awed by the members of the association.

I empathise with every word of Mr. Coyle's contribution. I could talk for a week on this topic but I will limit my contribution to two points. First, Mr. Whelan wrote a letter on the outreach export programme in which he states that many mid-sized companies have difficulties in growing their business internationally and find themselves outside the State's support agency system for exports. The IEA estimates that 14,700 companies employ approximately 500,000 people. Enterprise Ireland has 1,700 of these companies as client companies, which leaves a large group of business with potential to become successful exporters and with the ability to create jobs.

Our Chairman has kindly agreed to invite Enterprise Ireland to appear before the joint committee as soon as possible. A new scheme was launched in March of this year by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, setting up a new department in Enterprise Ireland that will help 1,800 companies to export their products. We will then be able to see how that programme is developing. It is very timely to meet the delegations from the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland and the Irish Exporters Association because the prime issue today is jobs. We have 309,000 people unemployed of whom 60% are in long-term unemployment. They have been continuously unemployed for more than a year. The only issue that matters is jobs.

I co-founded a business in the 1980 motivated by the need to tackle the severe unemployment at that time. Mr Coyle is probably a bit like myself. One must be a workaholic to start up a business, particularly a manufacturing business.