Mr. Tom Hayes:

We addressed this issue at a previous meeting of the committee. There have been, and will be, significant changes in the context of the county and city enterprise boards, where they are going and the evolution of the new LEO structure in which Enterprise Ireland has been centrally involved. The Deputy mentioned companies focused on the domestic market only. Our ambition and one of the key strategic moves we have made over the past 12 to 18 months has been to encourage companies which have a product or a service that is exportable to export. Just short of 18 months ago, we set up a potential exporters division to encourage and to help companies which were focusing almost exclusively on the domestic market to export. Over that period of time, we have gone around the country with export awareness events. We had 16 of those throughout the country and 15 exploring export workshops. We have brought over our team from the UK to help them to understand the dynamic of the UK market to make exporting that little bit easier. We have assigned advocates and mentors to well over 100 of those companies.

I suppose the most radically change has been to move from a one-to-one to a one-to-many scenario. We have get export ready, which is online and at which companies can look. It is a kind of export health check for companies to see where they are. One aspect of it is to encourage that cohort of client companies which have focused almost exclusively on the domestic market to get export ready.

I could spend a long time talking about the changes which are underway. Significant work has been going on in the background in regard to the legislation. The framework service level agreement, which will operate between ourselves and the LEO network, has been published. The new logo has been published. We are working on the website which will unify and bring together all of the CEBs. Rather than have them operating individually, they will be able to share from one website platform.

To directly answer the Deputy's question on companies which focus exclusively on the domestic market, we want to help them to become better companies through our centre of excellence. We are working on establishing a centre of excellence to ensure that each company, irrespective of whether it is the Kerry Group or somebody who wants to start a business to sell locally, has the proper business functions and structure and that it can find the proper information so that it has ready access to the knowledge and information it requires.

Appreciating the tremendous work the CEBs have done over the years, we want to build on it, enhance it and strengthen it to ensure that all companies in the State which want to start a business are looked after, irrespective of whether it is the domestic market only or whether it has an export ambition as well.