Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Green financial services already is a growth area in the IFSC at present. The presence in Dublin of international green operations already acts as a catalyst for the indigenous green economy. It is a question of building on what already exists and is about encouraging more of these activities and building clusters of expertise and high-value jobs. It is important that indigenous green enterprise should be vibrant. In general, Ireland continually seeks new areas of opportunity within the financial services industry, both through reinvestments from existing clients and first-time investments for new entrants. At present, the areas being explored comprise financial services technology, e-finance and electronic trading, debt capture and predictive analytics, risk management, service innovation and collaborative research and development and pensions and green finance. These are complementary to existing opportunities being pursued across the IDA's three main business lines of banking, insurance and investment management.

This sector is developing all the time and I made the point that the tax revenue figures I provided refer only to companies that were active within the original IFSC tax regime. It does not cover international financial service companies that commenced trading after 2002, not all of which necessarily are located within the Dublin docklands. While there has been an attempt to accommodate the activity as distinct from the geographic location, in respect of the green initiative the Government is trying to build on existing advances that are being made at present within the IFSC area.

See this speech in context