Dr. Paul Saunders:

Mr. Caulfield has touched on a number of fundamental points. On capital allocation, as the funding rounds get bigger and bigger, the eyes of the founder of the company and the early series A and B investors get drawn into other markets, and the pull of capital into markets like the US can be quite a strong influence. One of the things we as a fund are constantly thinking through is whether we can go the extra round in a really successful company to keep it anchored in Ireland, even for a little bit longer than they may ordinarily be present in the market, just to make sure that successful Irish companies, even if they do go to other markets, which inevitably they will have to, often because the market size in Ireland is just not sufficient, still develop roots in Ireland and we, as a sovereign fund, can help them anchor. The capital availability piece is really important.

The other factor can often be development talent. As a company scales, the challenges expand quite rapidly and it needs access to a broad and deep pool of talent. Certainly the US can be quite a strong pull from that perspective, although we do see some reversal of that trend now because the price of labour has just become so high. On the west coast of the US, we see a lot of these companies looking back to Europe to expand and develop their engineering footprint and so on. Capital, the market and the talent are all factors and they are all areas we as a fund and a broader ecosystem constantly think quite hard about how we can improve the appeal and attractiveness of Ireland to keep the companies here for as long as possible.