Mr. Kevin Sherry:

As Mr. Shanahan has outlined, we collaborate very closely with the IDA. We run joint trade missions with it overseas to several locations, in Asia or the US. In November we ran a trade mission jointly in Ireland where 80 multinational and 150 Irish companies, focused on Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway, were brought together with multinational and indigenous supply companies in Ireland to help them collaborate more closely. This was done with a view to embedding those multinational companies in Ireland and for the Irish companies to win more business from the spend available from multinational companies.

We are also, as Mr. Sherry outlined, co-located with them wherever possible internationally and work hand-in-glove with them in terms of the networks we can leverage, as we do with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other agencies where relevant. Bord Bia is one such example. Part of that process involves having a joint senior management team between IDA and Enterprise Ireland in place which drives that activity. It goes without saying that on the research side in Ireland, the drive on technology centres and collaboration on research are important areas.

Some of the multinational companies coming into Ireland do so by acquisition. They acquire Irish companies which they see as having leading-edge technology. The numbers are increasing and we recently conducted a review on the sector. Over half of the companies we transfer to the IDA on a regular basis are high potential start-up companies, where multinational companies have come into Ireland by acquiring a technology company they regard as best in class, not just in Ireland but globally. An example is a company called Biancamed which developed technology for sleep apnea. An Australian company called ResMed saw the technology and acquired it. It is now a new name multinational company in Ireland which is managed by the IDA, but it was a spin-out company from UCD.