Mr. Kevin Sherry:

One of our fastest growing start-ups ever was a company called Eishtec in the south east, which effectively came out of the ashes of TalkTalk and which after five years employs more than 1,200 people. We have several similar examples of companies that started off supplying a customer in Ireland but focused very quickly on international customers. They compete and win against the toughest international competition and can employ many people. We are very focused on that area.

On Brexit, the UK is and will continue to be our most important market and for the large number of clients that we work with which are targeting, and exporting to, that market, we work very closely to ensure they are as embedded as possible with their customers. In many cases, they are supplying not just those companies in the UK but in other parts of the globe that have different requirements from those in the EU. If there is a Brexit, it will have implications and those companies need to be prepared. We are also getting the benefit at the moment of a favourable exchange rate as we are with the US. We would not bank on that continuing forever. In terms of the competitiveness of Irish companies servicing those markets, we have also continued to focus on lean principles to ensure they are as internationally competitive as possible and to make sure that, irrespective of a Brexit, those Irish companies will have a compelling proposition that customers there and farther afield will want to buy. Time will tell whether it comes to pass.

In response to the comment about efforts to get staff from overseas, we put in a lot of effort with sister agencies, such as SOLAS, and other players to encourage and support the availability of skills in Ireland. In certain areas, there is a global shortage - for instance, in software development. We have assisted the Irish Software Association in raising the profile of Ireland as a location for software engineers and programmers through a programme called It’s happening here, which aims to raise the profile of Ireland as an attractive location for people with that type of skill. It is not just aimed at established companies looking to attract those skills and compete globally for those types of people but also for entrepreneurs who want to start a business, such as the example I gave of the competitive start fund earlier this month when we brought people to Ireland with a view to considering it as a location for their start-up businesses.