Mr. Ruair? de B?rca:

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is a parent Department for all of the State agencies with the statutory responsibility to do external promotion, such as Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Authority, IDA. While the trade promotion responsibility was in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as it was for those eight years, the statutory agencies remained in the then Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation. Effectively, it meant that the two Departments had to work hand in glove around trade policy and promotion. The embassies have a function to work in partnership with those State agencies but also to act on the behalf of State agencies where they are not present. In reality, while the statutory function has returned to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, that requirement for us to work in partnership has not changed. What we have seen over the past number of years is an increased investment in what we call Ireland houses, where we co-locate, where possible, the embassies or consulates with those State agencies. One is getting a whole-of-Ireland service in a market. That has worked very well.