Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There would be a lag. Will Mr. McCarthy give us an idea of the percentage increase year on year in that period, not necessarily now? What level of trading took place? For example, I was a Minister of State with responsibility for trade and development, which was part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. All the embassies were mobilised as economic engines where Irish networks were established all over the world. Trade missions then went to an area where there were networks of Irish business people plus networks of other business people. All of a sudden there was business coming to small and medium enterprises that could not trade in Ireland or had never traded abroad before. I would love to see an analysis of the effectiveness of that because the focus was on the Global Irish Network in Dublin Castle, the ideas it came forward with and the amount of FDI it continued to mobilise for Ireland. It was able to mobilise SMEs, which could not sell anything at home because there was no consumer market, to go abroad and do that and maintain those high levels of export. That could be flowing into a particular resolution now in much the same way as the most recent figures for unemployment were down from 9.4% to 8.9%, a drop of 0.5% in one month. That came out of the blue and nobody asked how. Why could we have that amazing drop at this time? It could be a series of events coming together that are now delivering on the work that happened in the past.