Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy is aware that the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism has sent a letter offering his warmest congratulations to Yvonne Farrell and Shelly McNamara of Grafton Architects on winning the first building of the year award at the inaugural World Architecture Festival. The new faculty building for the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan, which they designed, is both stunning and truly inspiring. If I am ever in northern Italy I intend to visit it. Northern Spain has that famous landmark building in Bilbao that one associates with the city itself.

I take on board the views the Deputy has expressed regarding showcasing to promote Irish architecture and construction. While I am unsure about the dates, I understand that within the next two weeks the Tánaiste will travel to Dubai and Abu Dhabi with some construction firms to promote Irish companies abroad in the context of the challenging times we have domestically in the construction sector. The Deputy is correct in highlighting the large numbers of lay-offs of engineers and architects. These are highly skilled, educated and, obviously, well motivated people. We now need to look beyond our shores to find employment opportunities for these people.

I will convey the Deputy's views in the context of the achievement of Yvonne Farrell and Shelly McNamara. As he said, we should unashamedly use these awards not only to advance the nation, but also to give opportunities to young architects, engineers and others involved in the construction industry to break into the international market. However, this is a challenging time and unfortunately even though we are going abroad on trade missions, we are going to countries that are also suffering from the severe downturn internationally. If Ireland was alone in having internal challenges, it would be different. However, all countries have their own difficulties at this time. We need to continue to promote Ireland not only as a place for inward investment, but in challenging times we need to provide opportunities to Irish companies to go abroad and establish businesses there. We have recently built up considerable capacity and expertise in the construction sector which we could showcase abroad in the future.

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