Mr. Thomas Hunter McGowan:

I will try to deal with the questions in context, but will begin with Mr. Doherty's question on budget reductions and whether these have hampered us in any way and what our relationship we have with the sponsoring Departments. We have an excellent relationship with both sponsoring Departments. Our relationship works smoothly and we have no difficulty in getting what we require.

Unfortunately, the economic problems facing North and South have put significant pressure on everyone to make some contribution towards the effort required to get budgets back into balance. There is continuing pressure on the Northern Ireland Executive to get the cost of the public service down. Every part of the public service has been affected by this in Northern Ireland, where there will be efficiency savings of 4% for the next three consecutive years and where there has been 3% savings for three consecutive years already.

Previously, I outlined how we have a significant demand for our programmes but reducing budgets. We are devoting all the resources we can directly towards small and medium enterprises. We are not too concerned about the administrative budget and we can take a reduction there easily enough, but when we have to cut back on the companies we have to manage demand carefully. To that end, we are trying not to generate too much fervour for the programmes because, as I have shown previously, having 900 applications for 60 places is a recipe that could cause much disenchantment with the body and a perception that we are not fulfilling our requirements. We must be careful to keep the pipeline controlled in order that we do not over-press for it. The main difficulty we have is trying to meet as many of the requirements as we can with out over-egging the demand put towards us.

The sponsoring Departments have been very helpful to us. We have good relations with them and we meet regularly. There are no issues arising and we have never had a conflict about the things we wanted to do. The Departments have been very supportive of the things we want to do. However, we are all hampered by the overall efficiency drives that are needed.

A question was asked about outstanding barriers. In our recent reports we have found that there are no regulatory barriers anymore. The most important thing is to get the drive and ambition into the management teams of companies in order that they can export and grow and trying to engender that into companies is important. That will be the real barrier because even though we say that up to 70% of companies export off the island of Ireland, over 60% have never exported - the figure may be even higher - or looked outside the domestic market. We are actively encouraging companies to try to move up to that next step.

Deputy Smith asked about new powers and where we can go. We are an implementation body and we can only follow whatever policy is put towards us. We are policy takers rather than policy makers. To that end, we will do everything that is assigned to us. We have developed some new elements for dealing with micro-businesses in sales in cases where they are unable to meet the full requirements of our Acumen programme. We have had a closer look at micro-companies that do not have the same resources as medium or larger companies and we have tailored a new sales programme for them. There is certainly a benefit for them and they can take it up readily.

There was a question about getting innovation into companies. We do not charge companies for the capability-building that we run. We simply look for ambitious companies and try to get them to get at it. These are two new areas we have gone into. We are also looking at extending the public procurement process. We have done a number of go-to-tender and meet-the-buyer sessions where we train people how to fill out procurement documents. We have introduced small and medium enterprises to the buyers. The next stage is to try to get SMEs to collaborate with each other to make joint bids. Consortia building is becoming important. The next big task is to try to get consortia building going among SMEs for public procurement.

We have enjoyed excellent success for companies under the European Commission seventh framework programme. A minimum of three companies is required for applications. We are in a good starting position because anyone leading with us is already in two jurisdictions. We have had a high success rate, considerably higher than most other bodies throughout Europe, at approximately 30%. We have also developed a user-friendly app, due out shortly, which will help companies with Horizon 2020 funding. It helps to demystify some of the parts that were rather difficult for some companies. We have an excellent working relationship with Invest NI and Enterprise Ireland in working to ensure that everything integrates well. We have a good network in operation on the island and that will assist the process.

Deputy Ferris asked about the split and where our programmes fall. One third of the entire operation and the companies we assist are in Northern Ireland and two thirds are in the South. We tend to match it according to the funding we get, which is in the same proportions.

I did not pick up the question on the labour force properly.