Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak about the report on the contribution of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to economic recovery. I congratulate the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Pat Breen, and all members of the committee on producing a very fine report. It is important that reports of this nature produced by hard-working committees which have worked on them week after week and month after month, which have met delegations and travelled abroad are dealt with in plenary session in the Dáil. We should see more work of this nature as often the public never has the benefit of seeing the great work done by committees.

I am extremely disappointed that there has been no contribution to the debate from People before Profit, the Socialist Party or many of the Independents. They were very vocal in our earlier debate on Seanad reform but on this issue which is central to the well-being of the State, they are silent. It was only through our international trade that the reputation of the country was rebuilt. In the dark days when there was reduced domestic consumer consumption, we were able to sell our goods abroad and diversify our markets. They should remember that approximately 85% to 90% of everything we produce is sold in international markets. This is a huge issue for debate, yet those who are so vocal on all sorts of other issues are not prepared to come into the House and express an opinion on the importance of the work being done in the recovery of the economy. I firmly believe that without the strength and robustness of our engagement in international trade, without this boost and the record numbers of trade missions abroad led by Ministers, we could not have managed to walk the tightrope to keep the country afloat. We have had an annual increase in international trade of 6% every year until this year when, unfortunately, the patent cliff affected trade figures. Nevertheless, jobs have been maintained at a high level. I pay tribute to all those involved in the good work done in this regard and deplore the fact that the purveyors of negativity on the other side of the House have not seen fit to come into the Chamber to even give an opinion on all of the good work that has been done.

Deputies Eric Byrne and Eoghan Murphy have responded admirably to the issues raised by Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan. I compliment the good work she is doing on the committee, particularly on development issues and the interaction between trade and human rights. I will not go into that issue now but will come back to it on another occasion. However, every country with which we trade is a signatory to the United Nations Charter on Human Rights and has signed up to most of the conventions in place. We have not signed up to all of them either, as we have yet to deal with the convention on people with disabilities.

I have asked the expert advisory committee, chaired by Mrs. Nora Owen, to visit my Department to examine the interchange and interface between trade and development and between aid and trade. The committee is engaged in an exercise and has visited the United Kingdom to see how the Department for International Development deals with the matter. It has also visited Sierra Leone and will visit South Africa before producing a report which will be made available at the Irish Economic Forum in the autumn when there will be a module on how we deal with the relationship between aid and trade. This is an important issue and everybody knows that trade alone will not bring prosperity or economic development. We must examine how we engage with the private and corporate sectors and how this issue will feed into the post-2015 millennium development goals. The committee will produce recommendations which will mark the first time something of this nature will have been done.

As Minister of State with responsibility for trade and development, I have been closely involved in the work done by the Department in leading and co-ordinating efforts across government to promote trade and investment. I have seen the results of these efforts and the work done by our embassy network across the globe. Our embassies and consulates play a fundamental role in working to advance Ireland's economic interests in overseas markets, in providing a platform for the work of the State agencies and in supporting Irish enterprises seeking to expand their business overseas. The decision taken by the Government in January to expand Ireland's embassy network, opening new diplomatic missions in key markets across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, was a very welcome step in ensuring Ireland was equipped to take advantage of new economic opportunities in the years ahead. The global economy is evolving rapidly and it is in Ireland's vital national interests that we put in place solid foundations to support growing trade and investment links with emerging economies and new centres of international business, while maintaining a balance in our focus on key existing markets.

In 2013 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade increased its efforts to strengthen links with emerging economies. With the embassy network, it supported no fewer than six high level visits to China, including the largest ever tourism sales mission to that country, an investment-focused trade mission to India and a major push to attract international scholarship students from Brazil which resulted in ten times more Brazilian students coming to Ireland in 2013 than in 2010. The Brazilian Minister for Education and I signed a memorandum of understanding in 2012, providing for 5,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from Brazil to study in Ireland. People in Dublin will now notice these students arriving. They are also attending universities and institutes of technology throughout the country.

In November I led a major trade mission to South Africa and Nigeria, two of the key emerging markets in Africa. The mission which was supported by our embassies in Pretoria and Abuja involved 37 Irish companies and secured new contracts worth €7 million and resulted in significant business alliances. The trade mission to Nigeria was the first such mission ever to west Africa and another will follow in the autumn. In South Africa I had the privilege of pulling the switch to turn Table Mountain, an iconic landmark in Cape Town, green on St. Patrick's Day. It was part of the wonderful branding work Tourism Ireland was doing to promote Ireland on St. Patrick's Day throughout the world. As I was pulling the switch in Cape Town, somebody else was doing so in Egypt to turn the pyramids green, which meant we witnessed the greening of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo.

The importance of a strengthened focus on emerging markets was clearly recognised in the review of the Government's strategy for trade, tourism and investment, led by the trade and promotion division of the Department in recent months.

The outcome of the review, presented to the Export Trade Council on 6 February this year, had a number of major elements. Among these was the inclusion for the first time of a 2015 target of €900 million for the direct contribution of the international education sector to the Irish economy - this will certainly increase dramatically in the years to come - and also the maintenance of existing targets for the creation of 150,000 new jobs directly associated with exporting enterprises, a 33% increase in exports by State-agency-assisted companies and 780 new inward investment projects through IDA Ireland by the end of 2015. It is an enormously ambitious programme on international trade and investment.

A key element of the review outcome was the formulation of a new market approach which disaggregates the list of our priority markets and includes additional high-potential and exploratory markets, to ensure that Ireland engages effectively with high-growth markets in Asia, South America and Africa without lessening our focus on vital markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. The review identified an additional seven exploratory high-potential markets - Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand and Chile - for particular focus in our trade, tourism and investment promotion efforts.

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