Mr. Martin Robinson:

I thank the members. I will just start by echoing what Deputy Smith said. We are very proud of the achievements within InterTradeIreland and the work we have done and success we have had in enabling collaboration, co-operation and trade, North-South and South-North, over that time. I thank him for that. To give an example of that, last year, marking the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, we hosted a business summit in Belfast to talk about some of the opportunities that exist in the market. That was attended by more than 700 delegates, North and South, right across the island who made the effort to come up. Likewise, in this year, we are hoping to mark what is our 25th anniversary. Likewise, I agree with the members that it is built on very strong foundations and that significant opportunities exist going forward, which we hope to realise with the support of our partners across the island in our two departments.

With regard to the question on the data that is available, again Dr. Mathieson will pick up on that, but we have good information available from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, here and from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, NISRA, in Northern Ireland. There are a few challenges in terms of some of the differences that come out. His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, HMRC, is another source of export data. Again, however, it is sufficient to enable us to, for example, recognise that there has been export growth across almost every sector and that is really encouraging as well. I will let Dr. Mathieson say a few more words in terms of some of that data and what that has shown us recently.