Mr. John Nevin:

Embassies on the ground are essential, as is the attitude of our ambassadors. They are very commercially focused and they know they are there to help Ireland Inc. succeed. It is great to see that. We would like to see a bit more collaboration between ambassadors and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as well as State agencies and business, in order to drive this forward. We do not have the resources of other countries but we can be smarter about how we use resources. We are not as smart as we could be yet. We are relying on relationships and, to a certain degree, the journey we have ahead is different to what we have had in the past. When we brought American businesses here, we had geography on our side as we are on the way to Europe. We had low-cost labour, the English language and well-educated people, as well as access to Europe. We are now a high-cost society in the value-adding area. Culturally, it is a different market. Government and business must learn about doing business, trading and engaging with these countries. We have spoken about ambassadors being prepared and in some cases in the UK, ambassadors do nine months of training before going to certain market so they are up to speed on how to engage and work through bureaucracy like that in India, for example. There is an education part from ambassadors through to business on doing business in Asia. As the numbers show, we can succeed and we can win.