Mr. Kevin Sherry:

We have to make choices on where we locate our offices and that is kept under constant review. We have 32 offices overseas, 18 of which are co-located with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Typically more than one agency is co-located with Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in those locations, for example, IDA, Bord Bia, and in some cases Tourism Ireland. In the United Arab Emirates, the embassy is in Abu Dhabi but we are co-located with the visa office in Dubai. We recently opened an office in Perth and are co-located with the honorary consul. We are co-located with another agency in six other offices and in the remaining six locations there is no other agency as the embassy or consulate is located in the political capital. The Deputy would be well aware that in South Africa the embassy is located in Pretoria, which is the political capital and we are located in Johannesburg which is the commercial capital. On the east coast of Australia we are co-located in Sydney with the consulate, while the embassy is in Canberra. In locations where we do not have a physical presence ourselves as our chief executive, Ms Julie Sinnamon has said, we use a network of pathfinders. We work hand in glove with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

As the Deputy knows the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a much more extensive network in Africa. Last year Enterprise Ireland brought all the commercial counsellors together and set up a training programme for them. We work hand in glove with the commercial counsellors and get tremendous co-operation not just on trade missions but daily. Similarly, as I mentioned earlier, we work hand in hand with IDA on overseas trade missions and have access to networks.

We are able to leverage those networks. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a global Irish network programme and we operate with a subset of that, we have a global Irish contacts programme, which is a smaller grouping of the global Irish network who are committed to providing assistance to indigenous Irish companies by providing contacts and networks to get in the right doors overseas.

On the question of marketing the island of Ireland, we collaborate and work very closely with Invest NI in certain area. Ms Sinnamonmentioned the skills programmes, which Enterprise Ireland runs and Invest NI has companies that participate on these programmes.Earlier last month Ms Sinnamon together with representatives from Invest NI and UK Trade & Investment, UKTI, led a joint mission to United Arab Emirates on Arab health. We meet them on a very regular basis. We had a joint meeting with the UKTI team in Dublin last week. They are running a series of initiatives, in which we are involved and we can encourage Irish companies to participate in them. UKTI runs a programme called large opportunities programme, where they target a range of potential large construction opportunities across the globe. We have collaborated on a number of programmes where we believe there are specific opportunities for Irish companies.

Most recently we moved our office in Stockholm from what was a stand-alone office into co-locating with the embassy. Wherever we can co-locate we do.