Mr. Kevin Sherry:

First of all, in terms of activities I will, as I said earlier, come back to the committee with some further details on that. One of the things that Enterprise Ireland has done, not just over the last five years but over the last ten years, is to cease our involvement in certain activities where we felt that there was an alternative market provision of those services. That would have been in areas such as technical testing, for example, where we felt that those services could be provided by commercial entities. That included some activities where parties decided to undertake those services in a commercial capacity rather than for Enterprise Ireland.

In terms of the issue of personal taxation and Ireland's attractiveness as a location, I would point out that in addition to attracting companies from abroad, Ireland is also an important destination, as far as Enterprise Ireland is concerned, for entrepreneurs to relocate to and that is something that we have focused on increasingly over the last number of years. In fact, about 15% of the new startups that we support are run by people who came here from outside of Ireland. Last year for the first time we ran a competitive fund which was targeted at international entrepreneurs to try to get them to come to Ireland. We had 86 or 87 applicants which we short-listed down to 20 and, of those, ten came to Ireland to establish their businesses. We have had two such competitive calls this year, which were very successful. Under the second call we will have some entrepreneurs coming to Ireland next month to compete for those funds. We are seeing entrepreneurs coming to Ireland to establish new businesses and while personal taxation is, of course, one of the important factors, they are also coming here because of the availability of skills, the ease of doing business and the international access that Ireland can provide. An important factor in terms of that access is the cost of infrastructure and this is one of the reasons for entrepreneurs increasingly choosing to locate their businesses outside of Dublin, given the pressure on housing resources and given the high costs - both personally and commercially - of doing business in the capital. This is important for us in terms of promoting regional locations.

In terms of innovation, I will just mention here that there are national targets to double the level of business expenditure on research and development. A very important factor in that regard is the availability of the infrastructure, technology centres and centres of expertise that have been built up around the country including in the medical technology area, biotechnology and a range of other areas. One of the interesting aspects in regard to recent developments in terms of Brexit is that we have heard researchers in the UK are getting a bit concerned about the availability of, and access to, Horizon 2020 funding and it is one grouping that might be looking at where it should undertake its research. If one of the implications of Brexit is limited access to Horizon 2020 European funding and collaborative research that could make Ireland a more attractive location for those leading edge researchers.