Mr. David Hegarty:

On the consultation issue, the Deputy quoted a number of statistics that demonstrate our reliance on the multinational sector for corporation tax and income tax revenues. That is recognised in the White Paper and called out in chapter 2, in which we provide our diagnosis of the issues facing the enterprise sector.

In terms of a policy response, I will mention a couple of points. One of the priorities that I mentioned earlier is that the White Paper recognises the need to develop a strong cohort of Irish-owned SME exporting firms. We have set a number of targets in order to increase the number of firms that export to external markets. That is one plank of our approach, and it will obviously require a range of policy interventions in the context of providing supports to SMEs, helping them to break into export markets and so on.

The other key priority area I would highlight in this regard relates to priority 7 in the White Paper, which is about building on strengths and opportunities. One of the things we have done is to call out the need for a more structured approach to clustering. This is about trying to build stronger linkages and spillovers between multinational firms and the SME sector and the research and higher education sector. We are working on this. We already have some clustering initiatives funded by Enterprise Ireland, but we envisage that this new clustering programme will be on a larger scale and will be targeted at recognised areas of opportunity in the Irish economy, perhaps, for example, the area of offshore wind, which we mention in the White Paper. There is already a nascent cluster in that area. We think these clusters need to be on a bigger scale and probably better supported and funded, and we would see them as a mechanism for developing links between multinationals and SMEs. Hopefully, that is clear.