Mr. Steve Aiken:

The last question raises an interesting point. The British Prime Minister was in India yesterday, where he spoke about the development of the Mumbai-Bangalore corridor. This is one of, I think, 100 potential strategic investment opportunities UKTI has been talking about, but British business realises it cannot do it on its own. How many of those present are aware that the top of the Shard building, the tallest building in London, was built by an Irish company? How many people are aware, when they look around Crossrail, which is a huge construction site deep in the bowels of London, that the number of Irish engineers and contractors working on that is significant? How many people realise that those responsible for HS2, the high-speed rail link that will eventually go to Birmingham and beyond, are actively looking for Irish construction companies to go into partnership because they have the skill sets to make that work? These British companies are specifically looking for Irish companies because they have worked with British companies before, they understand how the process works, they have a similar mindset and they have a project development set of skills that are capable of delivering. Speaking from my own experience, it came as a bit of a shock to me to discover that UK plc managed to finish the London Olympics on time, on cost and on budget. However, it did that by being able to reach out to an international network, and a very important part of that international network comes from Ireland. That is likely to continue to grow.

I spend a lot of time on early morning flights into London and meet people around London at the Institute of Directors of the Confederation of British Industry or at various meetings, and I know the number of Irish construction companies, specialist engineers and engineering teams talking and working with British companies is very impressive. That is something that is likely to continue to grow. They have a success story and they are going to make it happen. It is an area we, as a chamber, are fairly light on at the moment but we will be doing a lot of work on developing the construction sector over the next year.

On the question about Northern Ireland, as members can probably work out from my accent, I am from that neck of the woods. In particular, we want to see an improvement in relationships across the island. We are an all-islands organisation. We are helping to encourage Northern Ireland to institute a corporation tax rate of 12.5%. Why? It is because we want Northern Ireland to move from its current economic model to a much more entrepreneurial and innovative model. We welcome organisations such as InterTradeIreland and are trying to improve that aspect. We want to be part of the bandwagon that is looking at this joint business space and how we can improve it. We are looking at all-islands markets and these are the kind of things we need to make it work.

I am quite lucky because I am on this side of the table and can say things like "one-stop shop" and then say something quite contradictory. It is as if we were going to consider using a different model. There could be an option to do it in the UK because our membership and our companies understand that UK model and how it works, so it might be an idea.

However, the one thing we must emphasise is that Enterprise Ireland, the IDA and Bord Bia are world-class organisations. They have done an awful lot for Ireland plc, are working very hard and can make that happen. The fact that they are directly linked with a powerful organisation such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gives them a great opportunity to move that on, which we fully welcome.