Mr. Peter Hynes:

The budgets are tiny. I have only been in the chair since December last year but the budget to which DCCI operates is really small. In respect of supporting local crafts, we are not officially a grant-giving body. We support activities on an exhibition or activity basis. If we were to get into that space, which is a discussion, the budgets would need to be ramped up to enable us to be effective.

On the question of a pilot programme, I absolutely agree that pilots are dangerous because they presume that you put all your eggs in one basket and nothing happens elsewhere while the pilot is developing. To the point that has been made about larger companies having the resources to lead the way, a wave of GIs is bubbling along. Waterford is the leader for many reasons. Connemara marble and Donegal tweed have also worked in that space. The decision has been made by the Department to set up the Intellectual Property Office, IPO, as the registration authority, which is fine because we need an independent registration authority. We also need an enabling body to work with the evolving opportunities that are out there. We need to learn from Donegal, Connemara and Waterford and evolve a model that can be used, by and large, in the applications and may be tweaked to suit the opportunities that will arise. I am sure there are some in Clare too but we just have not had the opportunity to get out and understand where they are yet. That is the role that DCCI sees itself as having. There is a resource issue to go with that.