Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

While some jobs have been lost in this sector because of the overall environment, the IFSC has withstood the worst aspects of the financial crisis creditably well. Significant numbers of people are still employed there in well-remunerated jobs. At individual company level, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland are supporting an increasing number of multinational and indigenous financial service companies to invest in dedicated research and development activities to develop the next generation of products and services that will meet the changing market requirements.

Norkom Technologies and Citi constitute two good examples of companies leading the way in this regard. I recently opened Citi's research, development, innovation and learning centre in the IFSC and the value and scale of the activity which is being carried out there is an example of the way forward for the industry. Increasing product, services and business model innovation is particularly important and is a real potential source of competitive advantage. Enterprise Ireland and the IDA would like to see more companies engage in such activities and can offer specific support for companies interested in investing in research and development. This is a challenging area and as was noted previously, a clearing house group meets and works closely with industry towards achieving the objectives in our smart economy framework, for example. This is an area for potential growth in the future despite the retrenchment that has been evident in recent times.

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