Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the guests and thank them for their submission. I apologise in advance as I must step away from the meeting in a few minutes butI will try to return.

I wish to place on record my disappointment that representatives of IDA Ireland are not here and I understand that there was a technical issue. Notwithstanding that, given all that is happening at the moment, and the current climate, it would have been preferable were we to have a representative from IDA Ireland here. I appreciate representatives of Enterprise Ireland for being here. There is nothing worse than going to a meeting and having people say that it is awful that there are not more people present because obviously the people who turned up are here. I thank our witnesses for being here this morning.

In terms of the imminent job losses in the tech sector, and I am not going to use any of the silly phrases that people have used to describe these job losses, but we have the serious situation where people are losing their jobs. I found the presentation by Enterprise Ireland to be upbeat in many ways. Therefore, I ask our guests to explain if there are reasons for us to be somewhat hopeful that what is an international issue may not be as serious an issue for us here in this State than is the case elsewhere. My understanding is that we have cause to hope that we may be insulated against some of the worst impacts of this downturn. Perhaps Mr. Clancy will outline why this issue may not be as big an issue for us here as it will be internationally.