Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

156. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if he will report on his recent visit to South Africa. [22602/15]

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

During the week commencing 25 June 2015, I led a four-day Enterprise Ireland trade mission to South Africa, as part of a drive to increase Irish exports and economic links to the country and wider sub-Saharan region.

Advancing Ireland’s trade, tourism, education and investment objectives, and economic diplomacy more generally, is an important aspect of Ireland’s foreign policy and of the work of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and its Embassy network. While the majority of Irish services and merchandise exports go to Europe and the US and we must continue to cultivate these markets, the Government is strongly focused on the further development of trading partnerships with other important emerging markets. As in all priority markets, a Local Market Team in Pretoria, chaired by the local Ambassador and consisting of representatives of the Embassy and relevant State agencies took forward the detailed planning of the trade mission on the ground.

I also visited the Vuyani Primary School in the Gugulethu Township on the outskirts of Cape Town, where I met with the children participating in the Amawele schools-twinning project which has been supported by my Department, and joined the children for a video-call with their twin-school in Ireland, St Columba's National School in the North Strand, Dublin. Ireland’s programme of cooperation with South Africa provides support in addressing a range of challenges faced there. Funding in 2015 will be in the order of €2.8 million.

The trade mission was undertaken in line with Ireland’s Africa Strategy which was launched in September 2011. The Africa Strategy provides a comprehensive framework for the development and management of Ireland’s official engagement with Africa, recognising that our relations with African countries are becoming more multi-faceted, encompassing political, economic and development cooperation aspects, and that exchanges in areas such as trade, investment and people-to-people links will continue to increase.

34 Irish companies took part in the trade mission which focused on key sectors where Irish companies have particularly strong capabilities including technology, telecommunications, aviation, engineering, energy, and financial services. Company participation in the trade mission showed significant regional diversity with ten counties represented.

The importance of this trade mission is underpinned by the fact that the Africa region now represents a $2 trillion economy and is the second fastest-growing region in the world after South East Asia.

It was a robust and successful mission with an immediate result of contracts worth over €12 million for Irish companies. Furthermore, dozens of leads for Irish exporting companies were created or progressed during the mission with participants engaging in over 200 one-to-one meetings with South African companies.

A number of contracts and partnership signings were also announced during the trade mission, including partnership agreements between College Ireland Aviation Services (CIAS) and Mega Aviation Training Academy (MATA), Johannesburg, for the delivery of aviation training and academic programmes in Southern Africa, and between AuBren DAQS and Voltas Technologies, to introduce AuBren’s special brand of precision air handling systems to Africa. The latter is understood to have a value of €3 million to €5 million over the next four years and should see AuBren increase its international staffing by fifty per cent.