Mr. Ian Talbot:

Outsourcing of non-core activities enables the public service to perform its core, front-line services while saving considerable amounts of money. Outsourcing has already been embraced by many in the private sector in Ireland. Furthermore, it is presented as an effective money-saving option in a number of documents produced by this and previous Governments in Ireland, which are listed in the document given to the members of the committee.

Outsourcing could also be extended to the authorisation of trade documents. There may be an opportunity to remove some of the administrative burden for the Department while streamlining the export process for companies. We would welcome the opportunity to explore the potential for the designation of Chambers Ireland and a number of our affiliated chambers as "competent authorities" under the Hague Convention for the issue of apostilles for commercial documentation. Currently, these can only be issued by the Department at its offices in Cork and Dublin, and very often it is a requirement that the documents are stamped in advance by a chamber of commerce or notary public as well. Allowing businesses to have an apostille applied at a chamber of commerce, which means a much greater geographic spread, would not only be good for the business, it would also ease administrative pressure on the Department and enable it to focus on its core responsibilities.

Chambers of commerce also have the capacity to electronically process other trade documents. For exporters this saves time and increases efficiencies. We hope to explore the possibility of greater use of electronic document processing in the future.

I thank the members for giving me the opportunity to make this presentation.