Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will go into some of the specifics on the banking authority. My understanding is that we were offering approximately €13.5 million in rental support and a further €1 million to help staff relocate. As such, some hard numbers were involved. Based on the scoring mechanism or the political considerations, might offering more money have tipped the balance?

Has there been any ask of France? Maybe I am being naive in even asking this question, but France has a larger economy than Ireland and it is much less exposed to Brexit than we are. Were there diplomatic or senior political efforts to tell the French that, although they had been pulled out of the bag, this would have been ten times more important to us in relative terms and, in the spirit of egalitéand fraternité, ask them to consider something else?

Regarding the process of Paris being pulled out of a bag, which was essentially a coin toss, my understanding is that we scored better than Paris when Frankfurt was knocked out. The Minister of State is saying that is not the case.

Was the Government okay with pulling it out of a bag? Should there have been more diplomatic efforts to make a case for Ireland, in particular in the context of Brexit?

I referred to potential earnings. I acknowledge that the Minister of State and diplomatic team did their best and raising this issue is not about having a go at them. We have lost the Rugby World Cup, the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority, despite having really good people on all of those teams trying to sell Ireland. There is a big sell we need to start winning on. Financial services, engineering and professional services jobs, as well as all manner of other jobs, are coming from the UK and, it is to be hoped, other places. We are under pressure in terms of FDI and the US. We need to learn from our losses and start winning. Does the Minister of State have any reflections on things which team Ireland can start to do in order to get more jobs into the country? We really need them.

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