Ms Julie Sinnamon:

The Deputy has asked many questions. I will begin by speaking about our resources and Mr. Sherry will speak about collaboration abroad and how we work effectively on this.

Over the past year we have recruited an additional 20 people to beef up our overseas network. The recruitment programme was approved approximately a year ago and it has been completed. More people are in the field working with Irish companies. As I stated, we have gone through a voluntary redundancy programme in Ireland. While more than 20 people are being recruited to work overseas, 47 people have agreed to exit under the voluntary programme in Ireland. We have approval from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to recruit an additional 21 staff. It is about reskilling the organisation, adding additional resources overseas and changing how we operate. We have also brought on board a large number of trade consultants - we call them pathfinders - in 55 countries. While we have 32 offices worldwide, we have trade consultants who help us in countries where we do not have offices. We constantly review whether we need an office, which is driven by companies responding to clients' needs and constantly examining what is happening in countries and whether we need to increase our resources.