Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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The trade function in my Department is essentially a co-ordinating function. As the Deputy knows, a number of Departments have a trade function. All of that has been pulled together under the Export Trade Council, which I chair. The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation is on the Export Trade Council, as are the Ministers for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Transport, Tourism and Sport. The objective of our co-ordinating work is to ensure there is a trade-focused approach to our overseas efforts, regardless of whether those efforts are carried out by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, by another Department or by one of the agencies. Our local market teams in priority markets, which are headed by ambassadors, report to the Export Trade Council through my Department. The objective of the decision to transfer the trade function to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was not to locate all trade activity in that Department. It was to give the Department a co-ordinating and an umbrella role with regard to the trade activities of all Departments so that a concerted, co-ordinated and effective trade focus could be brought to the Government's work. It could be described as a whole-of-Government approach to trade activity.