Mr. Neale Richmond:

Councillor Ciaran McCarthy is an independent councillor from Cork. Within our group, we sit in larger political groups, as Senator Burke will remember. Councillor Maria Byrne and I are members of the EPP, while Councillor Freehill is a member of the socialist grouping. We mirror the European Parliament. Councillors McCarthy, Stenson and McGrath, who are all independents, sit in the European Free Alliance which used to involve Fianna Fáil and the Europe of the Nations group once upon a time. As a Sinn Féin councillor, Rose Conway Walsh from Mayo sits as an independent. Our two Fianna Fáil colleagues sit in the liberal ALDE group. As such, we have a responsibility to our groups as well. We do not go over there and completely abandon what we feel is important, but we have differing opinions. Maria Byrne and I are proud members of Fine Gael and the EPP, as are all the members of their respective affiliations, and we must do what we believe accords with our political persuasions. We are talking about certain different things. We will have different opinions on everything political, but that is the way it goes.

There is definitely an appreciation at a European level of the sacrifices Ireland has made. Maria Byrne and I had a meeting with a number of leading EPP MEPs and members of the European Council, Heads of State and Ministers when we were over for plenary last week. All of them speaking to our entire group of representatives from 28 member states cited the examples of both Ireland and Portugal as countries which have made deep and meaningful sacrifices, albeit sacrifices with a direction. They were made for a reason, which was to get back on an even keel. We will probably disagree politically on whether it was the right thing to do, but there is a recognition that something was done and things definitely have changed at an Irish level. We are seeing that with the type of jobs that are coming on stream. They are not all low-paid jobs. We are seeing some really high-paying high-tech jobs. Within the fin-tech sector, there is a potential in the next 20 years for 5,000 jobs with an average wage of €80,000 per annum. That is a high-quality sustainable job of the type we need to attract to Ireland and not just for Dublin, Cork or the Kerry region. We need such jobs throughout the entire country because that is where we compete against the other European regions such as Poland and the UK, especially Scotland. I will hand over to Councillor Byrne to wrap up.