Dr. Robert Kelly:

I thank the Deputy for her question. First, to build a little on what Mr. Madouros said, we had the signed article in the last quarterly bulletin, and I will give the context of what we are talking about in terms of ICT services. Ireland's employment has grown quite strongly, out of step even with European comparators, since 2018. The ICT services sector has grown at four times that rate to a point that one in 15 people in the State now work in this sector. It is a big employer, so in the context of its growth, at the time we estimated maybe 2,300 people would be affected, but we have also seen announcements - we have seen Amazon and Meta in recent times - so we are waiting to see them come through to ascertain that.

We also conduct market intelligence to try to better understand the nature of these roles. When we talk to these companies, they give the term "support services" as being where a lot of these individuals work rather than in their core business. We see a positive there because support services potentially are more transferable across sectors. When we look more broadly in the economy, there is a clear demand for labour that cannot be met by the supplier right now. Over the past decade we have seen that imbalance between supply and demand continue to tighten. Pre-pandemic we thought we were close to full capacity. It has halved again to the point that, pre-pandemic, their unemployment to vacancy rate was 6:1 and it is now 3:1. I fully appreciate that we are seeing a correction within the sector, but looking at the broader labour market in Ireland, it is very tight, and if these individuals have transferable skills, they will likely find roles very quickly in the broader labour market.