Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

-----has been a great ally to Ireland in the tax debate at European level. Not only are we locked into our commitment to a 12.5% tax rate, we are in an alliance with other European countries. We have allies and friends on this issue, most notably our neighbour, the British Government.

Driving and monitoring the implementation of the strategy is a new foreign trade council chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher, through his responsibility for trade and commerce. The role of the new council is to strengthen co-operation and co-ordination across all key State agencies, including by providing strategic guidance and direction to trade, tourism and investment committees in each key market. It has also had discussions on how to strengthen Ireland's profile abroad, for example, by maximising the impact of integrated trade missions, promoting Ireland through St. Patrick's Day and making better use of our current joint economic commissions with China, South Korea, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and Libya. At the council's most recent meeting, the Department of Justice and Law Reform briefed it on the new mechanism the former has set up to align our visa regime with the priorities set out in the strategy.

Trading and Investing in a Smart Economy has the distinction of being the first integrated strategy to promote overseas trade, tourism and investment and the first to have concrete targets for trade, tourism and investment up to 2015. The overall objective of the strategy and action plan is to marshal and co-ordinate the resources of the State. One of the follow-up actions in the plan is to ensure that the many Irish businesses which do not engage directly with any of the State enterprise agencies are informed as to the initiatives and actions set out in the strategy which would benefit them.

Are the new strategy and all of the initiatives taken by the Government to support exporters delivering the desired results? While the Central Statistics Office, CSO, will not have its estimates of merchandise and services exports for the full year 2010 until the end of February and March 2011, respectively, all of the indications from trends in the first three quarters of 2010 are that the value of Irish exports for the full year will be well ahead of 2009's approximately €151 billion and could be our highest ever annual total. We need to be mindful of this extraordinary statement.

Not for one minute would I criticise the Opposition for being excessively negative. In particular, Fine Gael is trying to be as positive as possible. Senator Phelan and others sent a positive note by emphasising what has been a successful element in these past two years. I am not talking about the Government, but about the country. That we managed to squeeze out these export figures in the most hostile and difficult trading period in our history bar perhaps the economic war is an extraordinary feat, one that has largely been achieved by foreign direct investment and agile, competitive domestic companies that are trading across international frontiers. We need to praise such companies more. To a large extent, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are ad idem in this regard. A new Government that punishes exporters through higher costs, taxes and State entanglements is not required. We need to remove the shackles from these companies and make it easier for them to do their business overseas and repatriate their profits to Ireland. We need to encourage a culture of innovating and growing Irish companies.

A number of Senators referred to the innovation task force report. As Minister of State, I have been proud to play a part in the task force's deliberations and recommendations. Some Senators have stated it is it yet another Government report lying on a shelf, but it is not. To date, more than 51% of the recommendations have been implemented. The document is predicated on the notions of action and implementation. Give us a recommendation and we will implement it. The task force's recommendations continue to be implemented. We created a steering group to ensure this. The group is not composed of bureaucratic or administrative patsies. Rather, it is composed of people from industry who want to hold our feet to the fire in terms of the report's implementation.

The report is not an arid document lying on a shelf. It is living, breathing and being pushed through the Government process. It is a great tribute to the Taoiseach that he championed this initiative as a follow on to his creation of the smart economy framework, which he published towards the end of 2008. It is also a great tribute to him that the actions are being taken. For years, the public and certain people in politics have rightly been cynical about reports that are trumpeted with great fanfare, glossy brochures etc. but are not implemented. That was an unfortunate part of our history during and prior to the boom years, but this report is being implemented. Despite the chuckles being deployed by Senator Phelan, he will find this document useful if he finds himself in government.