Mr. Thomas Hunter McGowan:

I will speak first to the urban-rural divide. Many of the companies we deal with are in the manufacturing, engineering and services sectors. As Mr. Gough mentioned, 85% of them will have tariffs of 10% or less even in the worst-case scenario. That would encompass nearly all of the companies we deal with and it could be quite low for many of these companies. In rural areas, there tend to be a lot of engineering type projects because they tend to be farm-based in the first instance. People tend to be more inventive when dealing with problems and coming up with solutions in that regard. We do not anticipate that the scenario would be worse for rural rather than urban companies. Much of the stuff in the urban setting tends to be more technology oriented. The split between them does not have any negative consequences, one versus the other.

We have not had many projects come across our path from the audio-visual sector with a North-South angle. A project has to have a real connection in that we are exporting a service, North or South. It is very important to get those relationships, which tend to be quite low in what has come across our book so far.

Senator Ó Clochartaigh also mentioned fish food. We deal with companies that process fish and have had some notable successes with companies in terms of packaging. Some of our FUSION graduates have developed fantastic solutions for fish processing companies. It is one area where, if tariffs were to be applied, the process itself effectively helps to reduce those quite considerably. A raw product versus one that has been developed with, say, someone in our FUSION programme will be quite considerably different and will have a much lower tariff. When we speak of tariffs, I should explain that there are thousands of tariffs. There are 375 different tariffs for fish alone. There is quite a comprehensive range of tariffs. That is why we are not definitive about any particular rates. There are many tariffs and it really is taken on a case-by-case basis.

There are great opportunities. We have dealt with companies dealing in both seaweed and fish. In particular, we have had fantastic successes in developing products. An example would be Oilean Glas Teo. in Donegal. Two people that were hand-harvesting seaweed made a product that makes grass very green. They could not get it into the Northern Ireland and UK markets. We got them a salesperson on the ground. To come to the end of the story, their clients now include all golf courses in Ireland, North and South, and most golf courses in the UK as well as Arsenal and Real Madrid and 12,000 golf courses in the United States. They have gone from employing two people to employing 23 people.

Those kinds of stories are important. They give people hope in that what might be small and humble beginnings can become quite significant in a local economy. There are a range of companies such as that one which have developed in Cork, Louth and Donegal, in particular companies dealing in fish products. Much of it is around the packaging and how it is done. There is a lot of technology involved in that. FUSION graduates can be helpful in that regard. We encourage companies that are thinking of going along that road to contact us. We will see what we can do because it could be a very good response in dealing with any kind of adverse consequences that might come.