Ms Siobhán Finn:

We were funded in 2023 under the REISS fund, which was an Enterprise Ireland fund, to look at feasibility for the sector. When I say "we", it was an independent analysis. We took on a team of independent researchers, who spent six months working very closely with the sector, looking at primary and secondary data and there were a lot of one-to-one interviews with the sector itself and with stakeholders. From that, we developed a really strong business case on shared services and a centre of excellence for the sector. We have done the figures on shared services and they all stack up, but that piece aside, in collecting the data, something that we had been asked repeatedly over the years was the value of the sector and to understand what the picture of the sector looked like in the context of the Irish economy. That had not been done by the Government or by Enterprise Ireland, so we funded it ourselves. We have copies of the report here with us today. That is where the data comes from. It was independently evaluated once we had done the research and it was shared with the Department probably about 12 months ago. We launched it at the national hub summit last year.