Ms Mary Rose Burke:

I will address some of those comments and then ask Mr. Quigley to respond on some of the issues. Foreign direct investment has been industrial policy since the late 1950s and into the 1960s and it has been very successful. Our foreign direct investment is probably responsible for half of our economic output and approximately one third of the jobs. While over 99% of the enterprises in the country are SMEs, they employ in the region of two thirds of the people. The Future Jobs Ireland report has identified a number of areas that need to be addressed, and we are working with businesses to identify them in respect of the use of technology, particularly, and productivity. The aim is ultimately to make the businesses grow. There are, however, institutional barriers. We need to identify those SMEs that need support to grow, not the SMEs that do not wish to grow. There is a certain cohort that we need to identify in order to support its ambition to grow. We have a number of proposals in place to deal with it. Mr. Quigley will talk us through those.

In the longer term, we need to broaden the economic base in terms of jobs and economic output while not dialling down on foreign direct investment. It is more about increasing the productivity of our SME sector. I will ask Mr. Quigley to talk about some of the specific initiatives we have described in the proposal.