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

We will produce the Enterprise 2025 document before the end of the year, which will set out the direction of the challenges that we need to face. They will not come as a surprise to the Senator. Talent will come top of the list. We need to invest more smartly in our talent base, starting at primary level, with regard to the choices that people make, and we need to include access to models of modern enterprise that people see while still at school so that they can understand what sort of jobs are available and allow this to influence the choices they make right through third level and into fourth level. That aspect will be huge.

We must also focus on retaining talent and on returning emigrants as a source of talent. A lot of women still fall out of the workforce. They are often lost to the workforce and never return. A lot of progressive companies are looking at that resource and analysing why we lose that talent. There are huge issues around the creation, retention and development of talent that will be central to our ambitions.

The regions, unsurprisingly, will play a crucial role. We have seen in the past 12 months a very satisfactory diversification. The last quarterly national household survey numbers showed that 73% of new jobs were created outside Dublin. At the start of the recovery, new jobs were concentrated in the cities, but now we are seeing a dispersal of jobs. We need to work on the success of our regions. We need to establish the areas of competitive advantage in those regions. We must build those out by conscious collaboration around those areas of strength. We must bring in local authorities, the education and training boards, the apprenticeship programmes and research programmes and colleges in the regions.

Building genuine clusters will be a very strong theme. In the Senator's area, the area of medical devices is probably our strongest cluster, and there is a genuine integration of our multinational and domestic companies in the medical devices sector. We also have very strong clusters in areas such as food. There is potential to build new clusters in areas such as connected health. We have the ICT capability, the pharma and medical devices capability and the health system, so why not be leaders in test-bedding, developing and creating clusters in these new areas? That will be an area for consideration.

How we protect our competitiveness and make it sustainable will continue to be a challenge. This is not only about our positioning in a ranking but about how we invest to strengthen our competitive edge. The Minister of State, Deputy English, already mentioned the science strategy. It will be crucial as we seek to build competitiveness in some of these areas. Manufacturing, which, possibly, we were too quick in the past to write off is now enjoying strong growth. With the right choices it can improve further.

The Minister of State, Deputy English, will speak about apprenticeships in respect of which new areas are emerging. Under the 25 new programmes already selected up to 1,500 new apprentices could be taken on. This could strengthen our manufacturing. We need to look at our research capability in manufacturing in respect of which, probably, the institutes of education are particularly strong. We need to identify new areas in which to build the capability within manufacturing.

Services exports are growing at double digits, and approximately ten times the rate of our goods exports. Our understanding of the process of innovation in the services sector will be of huge importance. How we deliver higher productivity and innovation right across the service, including in areas with which Senator Quinn will be familiar, will be important as people increasingly control their lives from a mobile device using cloud. As mentioned previously, living from hand to cloud is the reality of the environment in which people will be operating into the future. This is a rich area for us to position ourselves in. I believe we have the capability and the people to do it.