Mr. John Whelan:

Senator Mark Daly will be aware that our main embassy in the United States is in Washington and that we also have consulates general in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and New York. It is interesting that they are all located on the east coast. I, therefore, accept that we need more coverage on the west coast. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will need more funding if it is to be able to do this. However, I agree that the imbalance needs to be addressed.

There have been some wins as a result of the global economic forum. Glen Dimplex has been mentioned. Mr. Seán O'Driscoll was recently appointed as our trade ambassador to Japan. A series of such appointments arose from the global economic forum. Work has been taking place on such appointments in various parts of the world, but it takes time to get the right people. It is then a question of what can be done to support them. This approach is working well.

An upgraded visa that is easy to use was supposed to have been introduced by March last year, but that did not happen. The easement for the Olympic Games was not a great solution. A final solution involving the sharing of biometrics, etc., looks like being much better in the long term. Ideally, we would invest more in the proper biometric facilities in our embassies. We need to be more innovative in this regard. We all remember the strong commitment to resolving this issue made at the global economic forum, but that has not yet been done to anyone's real satisfaction.

Many other suggestions were made at the global economic forum, for example, with regard to the awarding of special accolades to people who had done special work for Ireland. There have been a number of wins. Our approach in a number of areas has not worked and needs to be revisited. Unless a group is paid by the State to do nothing other than to go through all of the recommendations to see who will implement them, how far we have got with them and what we intend to do about them, any future endeavour of this nature will be anticipated with a degree of scepticism.