Mr. Frank Ryan:

The employment performance of our client companies has been seriously depressed by the impact of the downturn in the construction sector which could not be avoided by Enterprise Ireland. It would be nice to say we had nothing to do with the construction sector and did not have to take the associated job losses into account on our books. Since 2008 the job losses associated with the construction and related engineering sectors have been considerable. We are conscious of the human impact of these job losses. For example, of all the job losses in 2008, 41.9% were in construction and construction-related sectors.