Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming to the committee. I could not agree with them more on their joint thesis that we need to develop our indigenous economy. I am old enough to remember the Telesis report saying that. The Culliton report said it and the Enterprise Strategy Group report said it and during our own time in government the smarter Building Ireland's Smart Economy report said it. While the attention was all on banking at the time, the underlying issue was that we have to move to a new sustainable, indigenous economy. In the past 35 to 40 years they were the times we went to look at what Ireland's economic strategy was. I absolutely agree with the argument that we need to become less reliant on foreign direct investment, FDI.

I have a concern, however, around the mechanisms the witnesses have presented for that. First I have a query for Ms Buckley and wonder if I heard her right. I was stunned that the figure for chilled, boned beef accounts for one quarter of our indigenous exports.