Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat agus comhghairdeas leat a Chathaoirligh ar do phost nua. Tá suil agam go mbeimid ag obair go dian le chéile ar feadh ceithre nó cúig bliana. I apologise at the outset as I will be leaving shortly before returning. With the hours of this committee, that is going to happen often. We will try to keep the cohesion of the group going as much as possible, but we will have people coming in and out.

The Chair looks like a very patient man. His patience will be tried from time to time but that is nothing compared to the patience of the country with the changes we are facing from a trade perspective in particular. Looking at it from a macro point of view, we need to be gearing up strategically for potential new types of employment. I am sure that is going to be some of the work discussed.

Our tourism offering, how we attract and who we attract might have to change as well. From an enterprise perspective, the area I am most interested in is developing our own innovation skills rather than just trying to bring in others with those skills. We are the same size as Finland but we never developed our own Nokia. Maybe there has been something on the agribusiness side of things, but with tech innovation I can only think of the likes of Stripe. I cannot think of too many companies where we have created lots of jobs from our own innovation. Maybe we can look at that area down the line. I wish everyone the best and I am sure we will all be collegiate and co-operative.