Mr. Ian Talbot:

Chamber Ireland members are the 36 affiliated chambers. The other witnesses are my members. If I add up all their 1,000 members and the number of employees throughout the country, it is the same picture. We try to do sectoral breakdowns every couple of years, out of interest more than anything else, so we have a sense of why we speak about certain things. We have 10% of a lot of different sectors. In terms of relative size, most of the multinational companies throughout the country are members of their local chamber and are probably also a member of Dublin Chamber or Cork Chamber because that is where other big organisations are. The membership also includes some small retail businesses on main streets and a lot of service businesses. It is very broad.

In terms of trying to track how many people work for our members, which is very different, we have approximately 10,000 members throughout the country and we think there are several hundred thousand businesses. Most of these businesses are micro-businesses. Typically, our membership is small SMEs up to the largest companies. It is probably heading for 1.5 million people. Two thirds of the private sector workforce, whether they realise it or not, are probably linked to membership of a local chamber. That is simply because the bigger companies are members.