Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman. I thank members for their comments. On the question of air miles, I covered 16 countries in six weeks. At one stage I was in nine countries in two weeks.

At the start of the process, it was said that we had no friends, that it would be like the Eurovision song contest, and that we would get six points. That was not the case. We have many friends. We are liked in Europe. We have worked hard and put in a good shift. We are not one of founding states of the EEC but we joined the European Community 44 years ago. Many of the newer member states see us as an example of where they would like to reach over time. We have become their yardstick. We have put in the work diplomatically. I thank the diplomats, who are superb. I must be honest and say that I did not now how good they were until I went on this mission. They put in a really good shift in term of the work they did all over Europe.

I thank my colleagues in Government, the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Helen McEntee, in particular, as she has responsibility for Europe, and her senior line Minister, Deputy Coveney, who put in major work, and my senior line Minister, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe. We were not just flying to a capital city or a country and meeting people. On every occasion there were diplomats meeting other officials, whether it was at Eurogroup or ECOFIN meetings. I went to Washington for three days for the IMF and the World Bank meetings. It was quite remarkable that I was going to the capitals, meeting people I had met at Eurogroup and ECOFIN meetings. I went from not knowing these people particularly well to having met them three times in two weeks. It did add up.

I will put the voting system in context. Each country had three votes, one for three points, another for two points, and the third for one point. We felt strongly that we could get into the third round. Our strategy was correct. One has to plot a pathway, whether in life or politics, and we plotted a pathway to get to round three in the banking authority bid. Part of that pathway was to withdraw from the European Medicines Agency bid. We prioritised one bid and got into round three. Subsequent to that, when everybody went back to zero, and each country had a single vote, we got 13 votes out of 27, a whisker away from a win on the first round. Looking back, we had to win on the first round. We had 13 votes, France had ten votes and Germany had four votes. The Germans were eliminated and we went to the next round. It looked pretty good. In the next round, one country spoiled the vote by marking both boxes. The three other votes that had been cast for Germany went to France. The combined power of Germany and France united. In my view, a deal was done, France was able to draw level with us, and we each had 13 votes. The names went into the hat and we lost.

There is a new dynamic. We have friends in the Nordic and Balkan states. We have friends in the new member states as well. Some state that after the UK leaves Europe, Ireland's friends have gone, but that is not the case. There is a new dynamic and that is probably the really big story. We are part of a group of like-minded countries that have liberal views on trade and are non-protectionist. We are a small nation but we must trade and sell our products. We do not have a population of 60 million to 80 million people with whom we can trade in our own boundaries. We must get out and sell.

Dublin, Ireland is a financial services centre and is the fourth largest exporter of services in Europe. When the United Kingdom leaves the Union, we will be the third largest. I am being very proactive to try to ensure we push as strongly as we can. All the jobs do not need to be in Dublin. I get accused of being anti-Dublin, which is absolutely incorrect. All the jobs do not need to be in Dublin. There are superb examples of companies throughout the country. Letterkenny is a medium-sized town of 20,000 people, and the number of jobs created by both Pramerica and Optimus is 2,500 jobs. Northern Trust is located in Limerick. Somebody mentioned FEXCO in Killorglin. State Street is located in Kilkenny. In my own town, Zurich and BNY Mellon set up in Wexford town. Cork has a very strong sector also. One third of the companies are located outside of the capital city. The location of financial services in the capital city is a good deal higher than most of the other capital cities. I am satisfied we can do more.

The Central Bank of Ireland does not have a promotional role now, but it had that role once upon a time. Both Senator O'Donnell and I were members of the Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis. We spent two years in a windowless room and one of the issues we discussed was that it was not good for the Central Bank of Ireland to have a promotional role. Very few central banks have promotional roles. A promotional role is my job and that of IDA.

In our preparation for the bid, we assessed schools and housing. We were quite satisfied that we had sufficient school places and housing for 200 staff. Two hundred staff does not always mean 200 families, and some people were certainly going to commute. There are 370 flights from Dublin to London every week. I think Dublin-London is one of the busiest flight paths in the world. We had no concerns about schools, housing or infrastructural development. There was concern on whether we would have the capacity to get out and sell ourselves. We really did that well. The combination of the power and wealth of both Germany and France could only draw with us. Our name ended up in the hat, but we did not win.One thing I can assure the House that I saw very clearly in so many European capitals, and which I would not have known, is that they have traffic there as well. In fact it is worse than ours. Other states' capitals have infrastructural deficits as bad as ours where housing, homelessness and other areas are concerned. I know of no jurisdiction where it is perfect. Some are better than others in some aspects, and indeed we are better than others in some aspects.

Senator Humphreys raised the question of what we did really well. We did a lot really well. For me, there is nothing as important as going to a capital as those of us who are politicians know, and we are all politicians in this Chamber. Looking our counterparts in the eye and telling them we wanted their support and their vote was something we did really well. I mentioned the diplomats earlier. They kept abreast of it. They supplied running reports to Dublin pretty consistently. The reports were fed up the line to me, and we kept on top of it as best we could. I do not say this very often, but I honestly do not believe we could have done any more. I compliment the officials from the Department of Finance. We were all over Europe in a very short spell. People might think it is great to fly around Europe. We were in Vilnius for four hours. One flies in, drives straight from the airport, does the meeting, turns around, goes back to the airport and flies out. One of the people with me observed that one morning I got up and had breakfast in Riga, had my lunch in Stockholm, had my dinner in London and went home to bed in Wexford. That was the degree of flying and travelling that we were doing. It was busy and I really do not believe we could have done more. I want to thank everybody involved. The toss of a coin is what it got down to. Did people believe we could get into that race? A lot of people did not believe we would be in the race at all.

There is one thing I wish to conclude upon. We got into the race with Frankfurt and Paris. In the first round, we beat the pants off Frankfurt and we beat Paris. In the second round we were level with their combined numbers. Dublin, Ireland is on that level as an international financial services centre, and it is important that people realise how important this sector is to the Irish economy. There are 90,000 jobs in the sector, one third of which are outside of County Dublin. Ireland is the fourth largest exporter in the European Union, and I believe we can continue to be attractive. It would have been very nice to have the European Banking Authority based in Dublin, but such is life. On we go, and as Senator Humphreys said, we move on, we learn from what we did well, if there is more we can do, there are other opportunities, although I really do not believe there was more we could have done. We have a lot of friends and we are very highly regarded and respected throughout the continent of Europe.