Mr. Paul Holden:

I will work backwards, if I may. For the past few years, the Digital Hub has been host to over 90 companies. That is true. However, it is not the same 90-odd companies all the time. We have a constant throughput of companies. That is quite a difficult trick to achieve as we have to be able to manage the companies coming in and the ones going out in order to maintain our occupancy level, which is at virtually 100% at all times. That brings us to the Chairman's question about room for expansion. At the moment, we literally do not have any room for expansion. However, we do have a property portfolio, which is the only asset we can leverage to develop additional office space and revenue and - to arrive at another of the Chairman's questions - become financially self-sustaining. The ultimate objective is to use the assets we have to become financially self-sustaining and to continue to attract more businesses into the area. The hub should be a magnet for businesses while supporting enterprise in the same area. We can already see that happening as there are some support and service type businesses in the immediate vicinity of hub although they are not our clients.

In respect of governance structures and so on, as has been stated, the plan is to transition the hub under the aegis of Dublin City Council as soon as possible. I understand that legislation is in preparation to do so. That will change the governance structure. The intention is that the hub will be created as a company controlled by the council. That will allow it to get on with its business.

Senator Leyden asked about the level of Exchequer funding.

The State funded us to the tune of €1.5 million last year for operational purposes. This is down considerably from even a couple of years ago when I think €1.7 million was available for operational purposes. In that time, our commercial income has increased from €1.5 million to €2.7 million, so one can see that we are already making strong progress towards self-sufficiency. Within our current envelope, we have cut our costs and increased our commercial income quite considerably but there is probably a limit to what we can do until we get further office space to generate income for us.

The Chairman asked about the possibility of getting bigger companies into the hub. At the moment we just simply could not accommodate them. However, the ideal mix would include some companies that are larger, and of necessity have sub-supplier requirements, and can buy in specialist expertise. That will allow companies which have that specialist expertise to grow in their shadow. That is the international experience. Large companies tend to have a collection of smaller companies that survive by being sub-suppliers to them. Our ambition would be to have some larger companies as almost anchor tenants so that we could encourage a sub-supply team to grow up around them.

The Senator asked about our relationship with IDA Ireland. This week, the Minister announced the appointment of someone from IDA Ireland to our board. We have had representation from IDA Ireland on the board for as long as I can remember. IDA Ireland almost routinely, when bringing them into the country, bring FDI companies to visit the Digital Hub to see what is going on there. Many of the FDI companies, even the largest ones, start off in the Digital Hub when they come to Ireland first. It is what we call a sort of soft landing point where they can start their recruitment drives and do the groundwork to build up their team here. On Brexit, attracting companies in from the UK is very much on our mind.

Senator Leyden asked whether we are restricted to just digital activities. The Act specifies that we are a digital hub development agency. The enterprises we are interested in developing are involved in digital business of some kind, be it digital content or technical application of some kind. The benefit is in the clustering activity that I described. They may be even taking or stealing staff from one another but they are bouncing ideas off one another, challenging each other in a whole variety of ways or assisting each other in co-operatively going after a market. They can help each other in a whole variety of ways. However, we are a digital hub development agency.