Mr. Martin Shanahan:

Over the course of the year, which is not finished yet, we have observed an increase in corporation tax. The Revenue Commissioners are best placed to comment directly on what they observe coming in. I do not have access to that information. I do not think it will look incongruent when the IDA publishes its results next January. The flow of investments in 2015 is strong, as it was in 2014. We are seeing an increased amount of investment, which is substantiated by the numbers employed. There is a congruence between those results.

In respect of SMEs and the international experience, the IDA and Enterprise Ireland, EI, work extremely closely together on a range of matters. I regularly meet my counterpart in EI, Julie Sinnamon, to see how we can co-operate across many sectors we have in common to ensure there is synergy and complementarity in our work with multinationals, how the indigenous base can benefit from the presence of multinationals, and how we can use our strong cadre of Irish firms in several sectors to attract foreign direct investment, FDI, in the sense that multinationals can partner with them, use their technology or use them as sub-suppliers and do joint ventures together. That might ultimately lead to acquisition, although that is not what we set out to achieve. We want to see Irish firms grow and prosper and make independent public offerings, IPOs, if that is to be. There is a great deal of co-operation. Under the new strategy we will focus on that area and have outlined some of the things I have spoken about to achieve those ends. We have put in place some very practical measures to expedite these synergies. We share with EI details of every new IDA client that comes on board, with its blessing, saying who it is and what business it is in. That gives EI the opportunity to put together lists of sub-suppliers which might pitch to this new client. We do this particularly where there is substantial capital investment, and there may be Irish companies which can play a part in that investment. We have had that streamlined process in place since the start of this year. We are going back over the existing portfolio to see what opportunities exist to make those connections. We have introduced, together with EI, new initiatives, such as trade missions to Ireland. In the same way as EI brings Irish companies abroad to expose them to multinationals, which might acquire and procure from them. We bring Irish companies around Ireland to pitch to existing multinationals so that they may get access to the global supply chain of those companies. This is the second year we have done that and it has proved very successful.

We are studying other areas where we may work with EI around mobile entrepreneurship. We pitch to emerging companies that have already set up; they may be small and they may be going international for the first time. EI does similar work with entrepreneurs who do not have any presence but have a good idea and seek funding. We are working on how we might do that in a more cohesive way. There is a lot of activity.

The Deputy mentioned how we compare with others in this regard. That is difficult to assess, given that the presence of FDI is much more concentrated in Ireland than in any other country. That makes it much more difficult to judge how we are doing. At a macro level, Ireland has achieved between three and four times the amount of FDI one might expect given our size, based on GDP or size of population. There are no neat comparisons. I meet with my colleagues from other investment promotion agencies. They are typically judged by slightly different metrics and count slightly different things, so it is difficult to get a universal comparator.