Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

One must always compete for FDI. Investors will look, for example, at Manchester and different locations. An agency that is trying to win foreign direct investment, whatever its geographic mandate, will compete, and that has always been the case. I do not see competition as a bad thing. The more Ireland is promoted as a good place to invest, and the more vibrant the competition is, then the better it is for both sides. We will win some and we will lose some, but promotion has a good impact. I can see where we can increase collaboration. We can look at whether there are sub-supply opportunities within an FDI base, which is a concept that we have tried to promote. Last year, we had a trade mission to Ireland in which a number of companies visited what were effectively multinationals and Irish companies in terms of building a sub-supply chain.

We need to look at the sub-supply chain. InterTradeIreland is well placed to do that and it has already provided programmes on public procurement, the Go-2-Tender programme, which is very successful and gets companies familiar with what it takes to win tenders. That is the sort of collaboration we can build. We can allow companies to participate in Enterprise Ireland programmes for capability building, but when we are competing head-to-head for an individual investment, we are competing with many locations, although that does not mean we are not building a stronger economy and promoting trade and collaboration in many other areas.