Mr. Niall Burgess:

I will go through the issues more or less in the order in which they were raised. Deputy Crowe raised the question of numbers of emigrants to Canada and Australia. We have more detailed figures for these two countries than for the United States. For Australia, 25,827 working holiday visas were granted last year, with 645 Irish nationals granted a student visa. Some 4,500 Irish-born people became permanent residents of Australia through that country's skills programme. Canadian figures show 6,680 Irish people entering Canada as temporary foreign workers, with 5,350 entering under the working holiday programme. As members may know, there is a new extension and an expanded working visa scheme in Canada which, from granting 6,000 visas this year will increase to 10,000 visas next year. This year, all 6,000 visas were taken up quickly and we expect a full uptake next year as well. That gives a sense of the numbers for Canada and Australia.

A few points were made about The Gathering and I will take them together. Critical to the success of both The Gathering and the expansion our tourism take every year is access. That infrastructural point of access comes up repeatedly. For example, there are no direct flights to the west coast of the United States. Embassies are constantly active on this point but for the airlines the considerations are commercial and this sets a limit to what can be achieved. The Gathering seems to be delivering a significant increase in visitors but it is too soon to give any detail. Tourism Ireland figures show an increase in the region of 23% for the first quarter this year, but we must factor into that the fact that Easter fell in the first quarter. It is too soon to speak with any precision. The trend of visitors coming from Britain has been generally downward in recent years which is a big issue for Tourism Ireland to address. The legacy of The Gathering is under active consideration. Skills are being learned and developed as we go out and do something that has not been done before. These need to be deployed continually, however that may be done. I believe it will happen as we get closer to the end of the year.

Deputy Durkan spoke about the riches that exist at local level.

One of the significant things about The Gathering in terms of diaspora engagement is that it has brought that engagement down to a very strong local level. The Global Irish Network operates at a blue skies level, but local communities are now promoting what they have to offer and are also learning skills that need to be deployed into the future. The question of job creation came up, and I believe The Gathering is a very good example of an initiative that can deliver jobs right across the country, not all of them high skilled and not necessarily in the high-tech sector.

We were asked how we could maximise our exports in terms of job creation. That is something we want to discuss at the forum this year. The Global Irish Economic Forum and the Global Irish Network do not represent the answer to many of our most difficult economic problems, but they represent a willingness to listen, an openness to fresh ideas and a willingness to enter into a real dialogue with members of our diaspora. They bring a perspective and ideas that may not necessarily occur to us at home.

On our approach to the network, since the first network meeting in 2009, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been trying to do something in a structured way that we had not done in a very structured way previously. We are learning as we go. Each time there is a meeting of the Global Irish Economic Forum, we do it slightly differently. We acknowledge that upfront. I can identify some trends in how this has developed since the last forum. There has been a much more determined approach to reporting the specific outcomes. We had a six-month progress report and a 12-month progress report which set out clearly the undertakings of the forum and how close we had come to achieving those. They have been met in very large part at this stage. There has been a commitment to reporting and a commitment to co-ordination across Government. The high level interdepartmental group chaired by Mr. Martin Fraser, which meets regularly, has made a big difference to the way different expertise is brought to bear on the forum this year. It has become a very important factor in preparing for the forum.

Another trend has been gradually passing some ownership on to members of the network themselves. That is where the advisory group of the Global Irish Network, chaired by the Tánaiste, is important. The most recent meeting of that group took place in February and was very much a preparatory meeting to consider the themes for this year's forum. That is a way to bring in ideas from forum members themselves. I do not doubt that the follow-up after October this year will be somewhat different. However, we are learning as we go and are very frank about that. I believe it has improved steadily over time.

I was asked how we identify the next generation of people such as Don Keough. That operates on several levels. I believe the network itself is a way of identifying the next generation of such people. Many of the most active members of the network are not the CEOs of companies but are at the next level. Surprisingly, many of them are Irish born and having left here 20 or 30 years ago, are arriving at the top of their professions in the United States, Australia, Canada and elsewhere. They are the people who have least time but are devoting most time to the forum. Culture is a very important way of connecting with that generation.

Don Keough is fifth generation Irish-American, and the fourth generation was not particularly connected with Ireland. It was something that Mr. Keough rediscovered himself. People might say that Governor O'Malley in Maryland, who is also fifth generation, is unique in that his siblings and parents have relatively little interest in Ireland. That shows the importance of culture and the importance of initiatives such as the certificate of Irish heritage, which is a way of reaching out to and engaging people in Ireland.

I ask Mr. Hackett to speak about the Farmleigh Fellowship and also about private equity funding.