Mr. Brendan Butler:

On behalf of IBEC, I appreciate the opportunity to make a short presentation to the committee. IBEC is the voice of Irish business both at home and internationally.

It is the umbrella body for Ireland's leading business organisations and sectoral groups. In a sense, IBEC is run by and for Ireland's businesses and employers. We have a headquarters in Dublin and five regional offices in Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Donegal. Our 7,500 members employ 70% of the private sector workforce, so it is a very significant organisation. It has almost 200 employees and a turnover of €24 million. We estimate that we are ten times larger than the next biggest business organisation in Ireland. We represent companies from the largest in the country to the smallest. It is important to point out that we also have 60 sectoral groups, many of which members will be familiar with, including the Small Firms Association, Retail Ireland and PharmaChemical Ireland. It is a very large and significant family representing the business community.

In terms of our structure, we have three main areas that interact with the business community, with policymakers and with government. The area in which Ms Paula O'Dwyer, Dr. Pat Ivory and I work is the policy and international division. We see trade as being absolutely critical to Ireland's future as a small open island economy. We export almost 85% of everything we produce. We are unique in terms of the importance of trade and exports and the importance of being supported by the agencies of the State in regard to that export reach.

We also have an industrial relations and human resources division which provides advice to companies in terms of positive human resources. It operates as the main partner at national level. I am delighted to say that it looks as if, on the basis of the IBEC-ICTU intervention, SIPTU has deferred the industrial action in Dublin Airport next Monday, which is very encouraging. The final area is the 60 business sectoral groups.

In terms of the importance of trade and business to Ireland, there is a sense at national and European levels that there has been a very strong focus on austerity over the past three or four years. We really believe we need to look at perhaps the single biggest challenge which faces Ireland and Europe, that is, the question of unemployment. We need to move very quickly to a jobs and growth agenda. We must do the austerity but we have not been taking necessary proactive measures to stimulate growth and provide opportunities for the 450,000 people who are out of work.

In April, IBEC launched a campaigned called, Driving Ireland's Recovery, which was, in a sense, built around four platforms to try to get this country back into a growth stage. The four platforms, which will not surprise anybody, included keeping Ireland strong in Europe. We see our relationship with Europe as being absolutely critical. The second platform was restoring domestic demand - what can we do to give people the confidence to be in a position to get back to a more normal form of savings and spending? The third platform was pivotal in terms of supporting job creation. The fourth one was trying to deliver world class public services.

We launched this campaign in April but we accept that the financial situation in the country is such that one cannot come up with ideas that will cost the Exchequer money so, quite recently, we launched 50 specific actions to boost growth. All of these actions are tangible and they will be delivered at no additional cost to the Exchequer. They cover a whole range of areas but specifically in terms of trade, we see the forthcoming Presidency of the EU Council as an opportunity to advance international relations and bilateral trade agreements.

We have developed our business priorities for the Irish Presidency and they will be launched tomorrow in Brussels where our director general is due to meet President Van Rompuy. On 21 November next, we will launch our priorities in Dublin. Given the importance of the EU Presidency, with the Chairman's agreement, we will extend an invitation to all of the members of the committee. That is a bit of an introduction to IBEC but to focus more specifically on trade, I will pass over to Dr. Ivory.