Mr. Nick Ashmore:

The first thing is that we want to make sure we can invest inside the State, so that we do not have a surreal situation where we are excluding Irish companies from broad stock indexes that we are trying to get exposure to and invest in. From a practical point of view, it is very important that we have a global investment mandate in order to optimise the commercial risk-adjusted return of the funds.

The other side of the coin is that the ISIF is there with a specific mandate to undertake commercial and developmental investments in Ireland and in the economy. Therefore, that frees up these funds to take a global approach where they are just focused on obtaining the best risk-adjusted return they possibly can, in accordance with the strategy and the risk appetite set by the agency, and also in a responsible manner.