Mr. John Nevin:

I will respond to a couple of the other queries. In terms of direct intervention with companies seeking to do business and Deputy O'Sullivan's comments, we strongly advocate that a good business must be doing good business in the region. Therefore, businesses have a responsibility to stand up and perform correctly before receiving hand-outs or supports. We would be better trying to support the market entry service companies that exist and to enable their facilities to be available to the companies going out to do business in the region at a better rate. Also, companies seeking to get access to those skills should be validated as making the commitment that is required to get to market. Too often companies say they are going to be in Asia. They visit the region and think they will do business there but they really have not made a commitment to do so. We must validate the commitment of a business before giving it supports to go on a journey that it may not pursue.

Deputy Smith raised another issue. To reiterate a point made by Mr. Kelly, we have a working relationship with Invest Northern Ireland. When we host and run events, we invite it to present at our events, education seminars, etc.

In terms of a silo approach, we do not oppose such an approach. We think the silo and focused approach of the agencies has been very successful in its own right. The work that IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland do on their own is very good. In fairness to them and the other agencies, we can see from the outside looking in that there is a continuous onus on them to evolve and develop themselves. In terms of the major corporations, the buzzwords are cross-matrix structures within the business. Therefore, one still needs to bring the agencies together at a top level in order to utilise the knowledge available within the different agencies to penetrate the tourism market, for instance. We have a lot of businessmen who have top level relationship in many of the Asian countries. If we brought that back to the tourism industry, we might be able to help it see why it should focus more on the region and fast-track its ability to take business from where it is currently to where it needs to go.

Mr. Kelly has already talked about the food industry, which is good. However, the tourism industry is very much behind the food industry at the moment.

I sat with the ambassadors and tourism people in Dublin Castle in January, and they pretty much said that Asia is not on the radar, that we have markets closer to home that are more important to us and that we do not have the resources to focus on Asia. We are not here to address the resources issue today. As businesses, we must make the best use of the available resources and that is the key message we must bring, that we have a huge amount of capability in the market place, so let us harness it better. However, we need more resources in the tourism sector. It is not an either-or scenario. We need to look after our existing markets, but we must put resources behind growing those markets because there are large travel markets that are bypassing Ireland.

Many of the committee meetings we attend are quite difficult, but this one is about asking for money where the payback is obvious. We have gone from 4% to 8%, in terms of our exports to Asia and Enterprise Ireland has said there is more positive news to come from the region and will make an announcement on that tomorrow. We are on a growth trajectory with the work we are doing there. It is now a question of how we can fast-track that further. The payment is obvious for the commitment to resources required.