Ms Bernadette Phelan:

For us, the history and origin story of business in the community is very much around addressing that need. In a very practical way, if a person is running a pharmaceutical site with an employee base of 1,000 people, there are GAA coaches and people involved in their own charity work, so it is a living community. We work with our businesses to profile the interests of their employees as one piece. We look at the needs within the geographic area in which it is based, say, in Little Island in Cork. We go through a process of having structured workshops with the business to look at where meaningful impact can be made on the key needs of employees and the hinterland and how the business can support this. While still very much needed, the traditional model is the financial and fundraising aspect of that. We are seeing a big shift towards creating impacts. Members of companies are volunteering their skills. For example, a marketing professional might work with a small local development agency and give it that skill. They work with the agency to support its longer-term development. Many of the multinationals are from the US but they operate in an Irish culture and context. Being a good and reliable neighbour is in the ethos of many of these businesses.