Mr. Patrick W. Malone:

I thank the Chairman very much for inviting me to attend today. I have already circulated my CV so I will not laboriously read through what members already have before them. It is boring enough. I am an accountant by profession. I was born in Dundalk. I did my bachelor of commerce degree and then trained with Arthur Andersen, which was the largest accountancy firm in the world at the time.

I, therefore, have a good grounding in procedures and large companies. I specialised in taxation, which I will come back to in a few minutes. After qualifying, I stayed in Arthur Andersen for a year to pick up some experience. I then worked in the construction industry for two years in Dundalk at which point I was headhunted and asked to get involved in a medium-sized practice in Dublin, which I did. As part of that, I worked on the audit of a large insurance company that collapsed in the 1980s. It will not take a genius to work out what company I am talking about. At 24 years of age, I was the one who wrote the report that caused that company to collapse. I did it because I was able to prove to everyone's satisfaction that my report was correct. That was despite the fact three other accountancy firms had audited the company in the previous 18 months on behalf of the Department so I have a forensic way of looking at and reading things if I have to. That created a lot of challenges for me with other people and I have proven I can stand up to being bullied and whatever else. I do not like to do that but I can do so if I have to.

I bought a practice in 1989, which was based in Drogheda, and I ran it while my father was running his practice in Dundalk. When he died, I merged the two practices and brought everything together in Dundalk. The practice is wide and diverse. I deal with everything from small operations to some large companies because of my taxation work. I have considerable experience, therefore, in the accountancy and business world. I have been president of Dundalk Chamber of Commerce and I have had various posts since 2000 relating to that. As president of Dundalk Chamber of Commerce, I worked in schemes with the then Department of Industry and Commerce and DkIT to advance accountancy students in DkIT to work with the accountancy profession in Dundalk. I also contacted DkIT, brought it on board and got it actively involved on the board of Dundalk Chamber of Commerce. To this day, there has been no break in service between Dundalk Chamber of Commerce and DkIT working together for the business community in the area. I feel strongly about that. I have also lectured on tax in DkIT on a part-time basis. As part of the brief on what I have done in recent years, including addressing committees similar to this, I have been responsible in part, or have been the lead, in producing four reports on cross-Border issues and the various economic circumstances in the area. The first report was done with Louth County Council and Newry, Mourne and Down District Council in 2010. The second report was for the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in its discussion on an all-island economy. The third report was for Project Ireland 2040.

In the submission for Project Ireland 2040, I was the only one out of more than 300 submissions who called for the recognition of the Border corridor, which is the M1 from Drogheda and Dundalk to Newry. I am glad the Government listened to what I suggested and it is now in Project Ireland 2040. The DkIT is ideally placed to maximise the advantage of the M1 corridor. There are 2.3 million people within an hour's drive of Dundalk and Drogheda. O'Connell Street in Dublin can only claim that 2 million people are within an hour's drive of it. Belfast has 1.5 million within an hour's drive and Cork has 500,000 within an hour's drive. Dundalk and Drogheda can reach a significant area because both Dublin and Belfast are in their proximity. That is a unique situation. DkIT's role is to maximise the advantage it has in the region. The submission I made on the M1 corridor showed I talked about the region and not just about Dundalk. I am not Dundalk-centric but I see the whole region. That region is as defined by DkIT, namely Louth, Meath, Monaghan and Cavan. I feel strongly that the M1 corridor is the route to take forward but it also needs integration between the DkIT and business.

One success DkIT has had is WuXi Biologics, which is the latest Chinese company to invest in Dundalk. Some 76% of its intake so far has come from that M1 corridor region. We are positioned strongly but we need an institute that can grow into a technical university that can stand on its own two feet. While we have a large population beside us, we also have the threat of National University of Ireland, Maynooth, NUIM, and Dublin City University, DCU, on one side and the University of Ulster and Queen's University Belfast on the other side. That is both an advantage and a negative but I see it as an advantage overall.