Dr. Orlaigh Quinn:

I will start and my colleagues can chip in. I will answer the Senator's final question first. We are very involved with our colleagues in the Department of Education and Skills. The Minister for Education and Skills is chair of the national skills council, of which my Department is a member. The Department would feed in, very strongly, in terms of its view of the economy, apprenticeships and skills because we hear that directly from the industry representative groups. We play a strong role.

The Senator asked how far does the Department go in terms of an enterprise and employees. That is not our role. Our role is to work with enterprise but we do very much work with companies. For example, in the retail sector, the retail forum is chaired by the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation. We can exert influence on things like plastic packaging and we support our colleagues in the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, which has overall responsibility in that area. Retailers have announced initiatives to reduce the amount of plastic packaging they use. Again, we can support such initiatives and we can bring companies together. I know that Enterprise Ireland will convene an industry-led conference on the matter in early 2019. My Department has what I call a soft influence in those areas and we work collectively with colleagues across other Departments. It is not our role to assess what other colleagues are doing in terms of their initiatives. We will certainly come back through on the evidence of the research. It is on that basis that we work.

The Senator asked how far we would we go. Mr. Donoghue may also wish to comment on this aspect. The Department operates within the policies, guidelines and criteria set down by the Government.

We use the current guidelines. Mr. Donoghue may want to add a word to that. Ireland is not in the business of attracting business that is not sustainable or that damages our reputation. That is really where we position ourselves.