Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

I have some very detailed information I am glad to share with the Deputy. My colleague, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Martin, and others have continuously pointed out that the jobs associated with Irish trade are high quality. The emphasis is on this and the Government's approach is to concentrate on high quality jobs taken up by highly educated people. That is the ongoing trend, as well as trying to deal with jobs at all levels.

As regards the types of areas that are expanding I will give the Deputy some statistics on the top five in the export area and the top five involved in imports, since he has asked about trade. I will outline the overall trends supported by figures. The value of merchandise trade between Ireland and the USA for the years 2001-2004 was: exports €15.7 billion and imports €8.7 billion — 2001; exports €16.5 billion and imports €8.5 billion — 2002; exports €16.9 billion and imports €7.4 billion — 2003; and exports €16.5 billion and imports €7.0 billion — 2004.

It may be of interest that this table outlines the most significant product mix for exports and imports, respectively, expressed in millions. Top of the exports list are organic chemicals —€5.283 billion; medical and pharmaceutical products —€2.19 billion; and office machines and automatic data processing machines. These are followed by professional, scientific and controlling apparatus and miscellaneous manufactured articles. On the imports side the top five are office machines and automatic data processing machines, miscellaneous manufacturing articles, electrical machinery apparatus and appliances, other transport equipment and organic chemicals.

These are the statistics we are working with and all I can do is share them with the Deputy. We are talking about high quality areas, such as pharmaceuticals. I presume "other transport equipment" means aircraft etc., on the imports side. As regards medical and pharmaceutical products etc. we are talking about companies as big as Wyeth. On the professional scientific and controlling apparatus side, companies such as Boston Scientific are involved. These are high quality companies that are obviously providing very fine jobs.

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