Mr. Sean O'Sullivan:

In respect of Silicon Valley, 40% of the residents of the town of San José which is larger than Dublin were not born in the United States.

In general, about half of the companies in Silicon Valley were created by founders born outside the United States. Some 75% of senior management teams also comprise people born outside the United States. When I attend board meetings in Ireland, I do not see that diversity. I do not see Indians, Russians or South Americans, for example, at senior board level. We have to ask whether we want this to be a country of origin, sending our people everywhere throughout the world, or we want this to be a destination country to which people want to come and bring their families to create lasting growth and a multicultural society of significance. We want Ireland to be a destination country and I hope we can achieve this. It is not just a case of accepting everyone who wants to immigrate but choosing to accept the highest value immigrants, as the United States, Canada and Australia are choosing to do. Ireland is not operating in a vacuum; several countries are actively recruiting high value economic immigrants. This is the policy pursued by the United States in the past which it did better than it does today. This is the opportunity available to Ireland. Do we want to be the only English-speaking people in the world with an open door for the best and brightest tech talent? That would be a unique and remarkable position to be in that would resonate throughout the world. It is a position we should be seeking to grow the economy to the point where we would not have to worry about a slow growth rate; we would be trying to restrain the growth rate and there would be full employment. We can take advantage of what we already have ever since Mr. Seán Lemass and Mr. T. K. Whitaker set the policy of opening up Ireland. If we continue on that path, we have a bright future. We need to aggressively seize and capture this opportunity. If this happens, we will be known around the world for it.