Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Chairman. I thank the witnesses, especially for being here. It is very welcome. I want to look at the issue of productivity. There are two parts to my question. Clearly our economic base is pretty unique in Europe. We went from agrarian straight to foreign direct investment, FDI, and did not stop on the way to build manufacturing or any indigenous industry. I would like to hear the officials' thoughts on what it is important for the State to be doing to develop our domestic SME sector into one of those high-wage, high-growth, high-productivity economies, especially in manufacturing, engineering, ICT, green technology and pharmaceuticals. I would be interested in their views on how we can grow that but equally in knowing why the officials think we have ended up where we have, that is, with a very heavy reliance for our productivity on FDI and there does not seem to be that stable, indigenous manufacturing base. In economies like those of Germany and the Scandinavian countries there are high-value, high-wage jobs we just do not seem to be able to replicate. They have a high-productivity indigenous sector we do not seem to have. I would be interested in the officials' thoughts first on how we ended up here and, more productively, what is our best route out. I do not see sustainability without a stable indigenous manufacturing base.