Mr. Tom Hayes:

I wish to assure Senator White on a couple of matters. The staff are the most important people who will comprise local enterprise offices. The word "culture" has been used and those working in county and city enterprise boards understand business. They also understand how to challenge a business proposition and they understand the dynamics of a business. In addition, they can read balance sheets and understand a proposed business plan. It is crucial that those core skills are maintained in every single LEO throughout the country. That is an overriding objective. Business people should not have to work with people who do not understand business dynamics. They may not understand the specifics of every single business but, nonetheless, there is a way to empathise and relate to a business person. It is absolutely crucial that those skills are maintained.

The Senator referred to the Irish Exporters' Association. For some time, it has been said that there is a gap between the cohort of companies that Enterprise Ireland supports, which is in the region of 5,000, and a huge cohort of companies that are not being helped or supported in terms of exporting. I know Mr. John Whelan quite well and while there may be some such companies, they are being catered for under two banners. One is the launch of Going Global which is to attract service companies that were doing work on the domestic market but may never have thought of exporting a service. One may genuinely ask how some services could be exported, but over the years companies involved in architectural services, quantity surveying, legal services and financial services have exported as a result of undertaking a feasibility study. Through connections and partnerships with companies overseas, they are now in a position to export some such services. That support service product is still there.

The potential exporters' service was established primarily to encourage, excite and energise a cohort of companies that was largely able to support itself through the boom years. The cohort comprises companies involved in areas such as construction, service and manufacturing related to that sector. We have already supported them, either through our online benchmarking tool, or on a one-to-one basis. Today, we have an "Exploring Exporting" workshop in Tullamore. We had one last week in Kilkenny. We have had nine so far this year and will have another four before the end of the year. As a result, we will have met individually with about 500 companies that are seeking to export. That is a whole new effort to energise and re-energise. It is open to any company, not just clients of Enterprise Ireland, but also to CEB clients or other companies, in any community that feel they have a product or service they wish to export.

As Senator White well knows, exporting is not easy and one must first test out a product or service in the domestic market. However, many companies do not have that luxury because the domestic market is so small in some areas that, almost from day one, they must consider exporting. I am certainly happy to meet Mr. John Whelan.