Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Question 30: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his strategy to reduce the economy's dependency on multinational enterprises; and the times scales of each element of its implementation. [4137/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Multi National Enterprises are a very significant component of the Irish enterprise sector and will continue to play an important role in our economy. IDA Multi National client companies support over 146,000 direct jobs and spend €19 billion in the Irish economy each year. The environment for Foreign Direct Investment remains robust and has created core strengths in key sectors.

However, an indigenous engine of export growth is also an essential ingredient for economic recovery. We must now create the environment where Irish companies can consistently build market share, where more companies start to export for the first time, where clusters of competitive advantage develop, and Irish-owned and foreign-owned companies work more closely together to forge new areas of opportunity.

Although exports from the indigenous sector have increased over recent years, the overall contribution from the sector needs to be further enhanced. Our goal for increasing exports is to support enterprises to achieve challenging targets by building their share in key markets and to increase the proportion of output exported by indigenous companies. Indigenous companies are also finding opportunities in emerging sectors which have been identified as holding particular potential for Ireland. These include sectors such as Health and Life sciences, Cloud Computing, Digital and Media Services, Digital Gaming, and the Green Economy.

The Government will shortly be publishing its 2012 Action Plan for Jobs which will set out a series of clear actionable measures to support the creation and retention of jobs. The Action Plan will include specific measures to support indigenous start-ups and help indigenous business to grow.