Mr. Patrick Daly:

I have an anecdote that bears testament to what the Vice Chairman is saying. I lived in Spain for ten years and married a Spanish lady. My eldest son was born in Spain and is bilingual. The first job he had in Ireland was in a customer service centre. He got the job because he was a fluent Spanish speaker. When he went to work, he and one other person were the only Irish nationals in the place. All the other people were foreign. The language skills are simply not available in this country. It is a block in the sense that we do not seem to promote it in our education system the way we ought to. As a result, we tend to concentrate our efforts in the Anglophone world. It is possible to do business in English in many places but more is needed if we are to get the relationships that are so important in a globalised economy. It makes sense to be promoting languages such as Spanish, French, Mandarin and Portuguese.