Mr. Frank Ryan:

We are delighted, as I know the Deputy is, about the decision by the Kerry Group to proceed in Naas. It is a major breakthrough. We do expect a spin-off for companies in that regard, or certainly a spin-off in terms of employment. In the same sector we would expect between 0.5 and 0.7 of an additional job to be created for every job that is within the Kerry Group. It may not be a case that an entirely new job or new company is created, as there are existing suppliers. One could expect that a reasonable amount of the raw material for the facility would be supplied within the region if not the county. Through the CEBs and shortly through the LEOs we want to help smaller companies to grow. If one is supplying a product or service to a company such as the Kerry Group, there is a good chance that one might be able to sell it internationally. In Enterprise Ireland we want to see that coming through from the very good work of the CEBs.

Reference was made to the sub-committees. We have three consultants who are paid a fee for their attendance on the investment committee. No other consultant on a committee is paid anything. We want outside people to be on the majority on our committees, in other words that internal committees are not making decisions. The workload of the investment committee, whose responsibility is devolved from the board, is to deal with the vast bulk of the cases on hand. In any 12 month period we deal with between 3,000 and 3,500 companies. The investment committee meets every two weeks and it has a large workload. It would not be unusual for between 30 and 35 cases at one time to be up for discussion by the investment committee. Due diligence has to be done on all of those cases, as a business recommendation and we must have outside people who are willing to do that on a two-weekly basis, for which they are not paid an exorbitant fee. The three roles are put out to public tender approximately every two years. Anybody else who is listed as a consultant is such in their private capacity but they are not paid for any service they provide to other committees.

I do not have the detail of board members’ interests. It is almost impossible to get a board member in the State who is not connected to something else. We would be happy to supply the information. As part of our corporate governance procedures they are required to make that information available on an ongoing basis. We would be pleased to write to the committee with the information.