Mr. Neil McDonnell:

It can be seen in the CSO wage figures. Imagine the kind of horsepower the IDA invests in attracting these businesses was invested in domestic champions. Mr. McKeever referred earlier to some of our domestic champions. The only really big ones we have now are Ryanair, Cement Road Holdings, Kerry Group and Flutter. If they were foreign businesses, the IDA would possibly only look at Kerry Group. I am not sure. The others would certainly not have been identified as business champions. Compare that with Norway, which only has 250,000 more people than we do. In 2021, it listed 68 businesses. We listed two. I echo Mr. McKeever's concern about businesses here. Their only strategy is scale, then sale. They do not see any imperative to get bigger than a certain size and when they sell, it is invariably to a foreign business. We see UK, US, EU and Israeli buyers in Ireland. It is great when a business sells for a few bob, but that intellectual property is lost to a foreign business permanently. We want to see the championing of businesses in the way newer countries such as South Korea and Israel did. They championed businesses such as Teva Pharmaceuticals and Hyundai. We have not championed big domestic businesses.