Mr. Michael Taft:

In terms of explanation, I do not believe there is a person who could give the Deputy the answer to that, because it is mired in decades of policy and the way we approach enterprise development.

I will give one example of why we might be different from small open economies. This has to do with the extent to which we have privileged the multinational sector, because we need everything possible to bring in companies that are going to invest. I do not refer to foreign direct investment but investment on the ground that will create jobs and economic activity. We have neglected the indigenous sector. If one takes into account the proportions of the economies, we would have to increase employment in our indigenous manufacturing sector by 100,000 people just to reach the average of the indigenous manufacturing sector in small local economies.

As to why we have not done that, one should not forget that for a decade prior to the crash we were too busy providing reliefs for a different kind of investment, which was not nearly as productive. I suggest that if we had 100,000 more people in indigenous manufacturing employment one would have a sizeable increase in investment and direct expenditure because indigenous firms, according to Forfás, are much more likely to source domestically so one would have that impact. Those domestic firms that are being sourced will then in turn because of the economic activity, generate their own investment to increase capacity and then one has an upwards spiral. I suggest that it begins with the need to build a strong indigenous enterprise. That goes back to the Telesis report in the 1980s which everyone ran away from. If we were to do that we could link that with a strong multinational sector but one coming in to engage in productive investment. That is a win-win.