Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses have presented an interesting and comprehensive set of documents and I commend them on that. However, we all know around this table that if we go to any Minister with a suitcase full of immediate and pressing issues, there will be priorities out of that and the Minister will set those priorities. Is it possible to identify the most fundamental and pressing measures that are likely to lead to improvements in the issues raised, without encompassing them all? Which are most likely to have an immediate impact and an impact on future planning in the context of service delivery? It might be easier for the committee to concentrate on those if we could identify the most important issues affecting and confronting the IDA so we can relay it to the Minister, as a committee and individually, in such a way that it gets attention it might not get otherwise.

I assure the witnesses from past experience, of which I have quite a bit in this business, that the road to the Minister’s office around budget time is tightly jammed with traffic. Not everybody will get the treatment they should get because of that traffic and the need to meet everybody’s demands, concerns and cares in a meaningful and respectful way. I ask the witnesses to refer the issues to the committee in such a way that we can use today's documents as our weekend reading and identify the immediate and fundamental issues, which will be used differently and will help us formulate policy now and in the future. There are two stages to it: the immediate one and future planning. Future planning is important, as we have heard from the discussion around the table and the witnesses’ responses.

There are many sensitive issues in the witnesses’ submissions and that committee members have brought up, all of which have an impact on the delivery of services, whether visas, work permits or whatever. We need to dig into it.