Mr. Frank Ryan:

I thanks the Senator for her kind words, particularly on the capability and professionalism of my colleagues. She mentioned the very welcome export increase, the increase in employment, which, I agree with the Senator, we are all about, and our overseas offices. We have had very good news in the last couple of days from the Secretary General on staffing allocations for those offices in due course, and we will have more about that later.

It is vitally important for Irish companies to internationalise as soon as possible. We are very pleased with the progress of the potential exporters' division. It is dealing with approximately 1,100 companies at various stages of initial inquiry to starting to export. That special team in the UK is dedicated to helping them break into their first market. It is planned that the existing CEB staff will transfer in their current positions. Enterprise Ireland will be responsible for training those staff and they will be eligible to attend our internal training programmes so we get the one level of competence. I agree with the Senator on the contribution and calibre of staff within the CEBs.

We have been very fortunate to have two of my colleagues, Ms Jean O'Sullivan and Mr. John O'Dea, take up a dedicated focus on female entrepreneurs. We are very pleased with the level and quality of applications we have received for the feasibility study and competitive start fund, whereby we have invested €50,000 into 15 start-up funds. As part of the awareness campaign we are sponsoring the Image magazine awards, the Women Mean Business magazine awards and the Going for Growth initiative. We are developing an online secure female networking platform, which we hope to launch early next year under the Action Plan for Jobs 2014. We continue to do research on that. Female entrepreneurship will remain a key focus for Enterprise Ireland in the next three year plan.