Mr. Martin D. Shanahan:

The challenge is to make this happen effectively and efficiently and to ensure we can continue to do as many of the things we currently do within the Department. I can speak to what makes Forfás successful. We are currently successful because we have the skills and expertise, albeit skills and expertise that have been significantly reduced since the moratorium on recruitment and promotion was introduced. We have recruited people for specific skills, whether they be in economics, business, science and technology or education or analytical skills around evaluations and data.

An important part of our current activity is our relationship with our sister agencies in developing a coherent industry policy not only on foreign direct investment and indigenous business or innovation, but also to ensure the three areas work in tandem. Our ability to engage with enterprise directly is an extremely important part of what we do. It will be necessary to ensure those facets of our current activity continue in so far as is practical within a Government Department in the future. This is what we will be mindful of as part of the integration. The process involves an implementation team chaired by the Secretary General of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation of which I am a member. I assure Deputy Dowds that this issue is at the forefront of our minds as we go through the integration process.

There are also some upsides. The Department has primary function for enterprise, jobs and innovation policy. Co-locating Forfás in the Department will shorten the gap, as it were, between policy development and analysis and its implementation. That is a potential upside.