Michael Mullins (Fine Gael)

To help us to achieve our priorities and targets, we must focus on strengthening our international profile and improving our reputation abroad. There has been much progress made in the past eight or nine months in enhancing our reputation abroad and getting the public finances in order. We must maximise the benefit of trade missions and continue to leverage the benefit of St. Patrick's Day celebrations around the world. We are all aware of the wonderful opportunity it presents to showcase the very best of Ireland. I advocated that Ministers partake of St. Patrick's Day activities around the world to promote and develop our export industry.

We must develop tool kits for Irish businesses trying to enter new markets. We must develop Ireland as a hub for global enterprise and continue to build a competitive environment for enterprise. We should maximise the use of the Diaspora throughout the world. The Global Irish Economic Forum was certainly an effort in this regard andI congratulate everyone involved in making it such a success.

We need to exploit the benefits of the European Single Market as we live in very challenging times. There is great uncertainty throughout the world, as other Senators said. We live in a small, open economy. We perform very well in some sectors, while our exports are buoyant. We are doing well in tourism, while the agriculture sector has considerable potential. We need to build on these sectors. The Government has a plan and a strategy. I wish the Minister of State and her colleagues every success in leading us back to economic recovery.