Ms Julie Sinnamon:

I will start on the issue regarding scaling up start-ups before handing over to Mr. Niall O'Donnellan to cover the issue on jobs and to Mr. Tom Hayes in respect of the local enterprise offices. The Deputy is correct in respect of start-ups and last year, we had 102 high-potential start-up companies. A key element of the 2014-16 strategy is the scaling up of Irish companies. It is not simply about scaling up the established companies but about doing so at all stages of growth. Certainly, one of the biggest challenges for Irish companies is to grow a middle-sized group of companies. We have a small number of large companies and a large number of small companies but do not have a sufficient number of middle-sized companies. This was a key focus of the strategy last year and will be for the next number of years. It is about working on the innovation and leadership agendas for the companies and on sources of funding, that is, the introduction of new development capital funds to bring in capital to help fund the growth. In Enterprise Ireland's annual report for 2014, a total of 27 of our companies were acquired by multinational companies in 2014 and were transferred over to IDA Ireland.

Those companies accounted for an additional 700 jobs in addition to the jobs we reported at the end of the year.

In the past year, the committee may have picked up on the Irish Stock Exchange working on an IPO agenda and trying to scale companies. All areas of the State are very interested in having more success in this area. We see it as an issue. If companies are acquired by multinationals, the key focus is that they have embedded sufficient stickiness in Ireland to make sure the company continues to develop in Ireland under its new ownership. We have regularly spoken at various fora about the fact that many Irish companies have sold out when they are given an offer. We would certainly like to see some of them holding on and maintaining some of that value within Ireland for the future and to try to-----