Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

As things stand there are no indications that there is about to be a major outflow of American companies from the country. There are issues that will now need to be addressed and on which we will need to work. No kind of exodus is about to begin. Thankfully we have seen second and third stage investments here in higher end manufacturing and in research and development, which will deepen the roots of these multinational institutions in Ireland for the foreseeable future because of the quality of the people we have available to work. The research and development regime we have built up encourages Ireland to continue to be a location for such investment. Ireland still stays very competitive in these areas. We will continue to adapt our policies to meet those requirements.

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