Mr. Niall O'Donnellan:

Gabhaim mo bhuíochas leis an gcoiste as an gcuireadh teacht anseo. I am Niall O'Donnellan, head of strategy and regions within Enterprise Ireland and I am accompanied here by Mr. Garrett Murray, our head of policy and strategy. We have prepared an opening statement which has been circulated to committee members. I will highlight three aspects for the conversation and then we will be open to questions and comments afterwards.

First I will address the impact of our clients. We work with 5,000 clients throughout Ireland who employ some 192,000 people directly and in excess of 300,000 throughout the State. In 2014 to 2015 those jobs increased by 10,000. Half of the jobs are in counties outside of the big cities and half the increase was also outside the big cities. Some €24 billion is spent in actual purchasing of services and goods from others within the Irish economy as well. That is the major impact of these 5,000 companies that are in every town, village and county throughout the State. We call them hidden champions and they have a similar impact to that of multinational clients and are central to the growth in the Irish economy. One in six people employed in the Irish economy are employed directly or indirectly in these companies. Roughly half of those jobs are in counties outside of major cities.

The second element I wish to highlight is Enterprise Ireland's focus on regional and rural development. The focus is in three areas, the first of which is to grow the established companies where they are. Many of the companies are where the founder and his or her family have lived for many years. Our focus is on helping those companies to grow internationally through our overseas offices, capability programmes, leadership programmes and providing funding to those companies. I refer, for example, to companies such as VistaMed, which has expanded with 200 jobs announced this year in Leitrim, Grant Thornton in Longford with 50 jobs and LotusWorks Engineering in Sligo. The second area of focus is around encouraging start-ups, both those which are selling globally and those which are working with the local enterprise office network. In that context, it is interesting to note that the competition for young entrepreneurs, Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur, has had over 2,000 applicants in the latest round, which is a significant signal that a lot of people are interested in starting new businesses. The third focus is on the regional action plan, which focuses on things in each region such as skills, innovation, broadband and infrastructure that can help businesses and employment in those areas.

The third issue I wish to highlight is the issue of Brexit. One third of our clients export more than 50% of their exports to the UK. Brexit is obviously a major challenge. Enterprise Ireland sees Brexit as a structural, long-term, fundamental change that is going to change everything for our companies and the whole economy. The immediate impact is the currency exchange, but there are lots of other issues that are about to unfold. This is a major issue, particularly in sectors such as food and engineering, that have relatively low margins and have particular exposure to the UK market and to UK competition. It is also perhaps a wake-up call to all companies to actually focus on innovation and competitiveness as key aspects of sustaining and growing jobs throughout the economy and throughout the State.