Professor Alan Barrett:

My core point is that employing more people is protective of wage levels. Domestic companies and the public sector are equally capable of asking people to take pay cuts. We must think through the issue. To return to the history about which Professor McHale spoke, there is a serious issue regarding SMEs and the indigenous sector in the sense that the idea of many of the development policies instituted in the late 1950s and early 1960s was that they would be stepping stones towards a stronger indigenous policy. Given that Ken Whitaker is still around, maybe we should ask him about it. The original idea was that one needed the big players here to develop a managerial, entrepreneurial base, which would carry on from there. I do not think in the early 1960s Mr. Whitaker envisaged that 60 or 70 years later the policy would still be the same and that we would be out there hoping to recruit. As Professor McHale said, the idea was always that there would be a blend and a balance. There has been a failure of the indigenous group to take over. One often hears this from international visitors. The Germans were mentioned, but visitors from countries more on our scale, such as Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Israel, often ask where the indigenous Irish group is. It does not exist, and this is another medium- to long-term challenge for us.