Address by Mr. John McGuinness, TD, Minister for International Trade, at Enterprise Ireland/IDA Ireland’s meeting with Japanese Business Federation, Nippon Keidanren, Japan

Tuesday 13^th January 2009

Good afternoon Chairman Kobayashi, distinguished guests.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to join us here today. It is a great honour to be among those who have been responsible for your enormous economic achievements. We are proud of our achievements as a small nation but these fade into insignificance in comparison to Japan.

The Prime Minister spoke about Ireland’s economic success and the importance of global relations. I cannot emphasise how important these global relations are for our future. As a small country with one of the most open economies, Ireland is heavily dependent on external investment and export trade. It is now more important than ever that we build an environment that will nurture international business.

I understand that the Keidanren is particularly focussed on developing an e-society and promoting technological innovation. These are also very important elements in our vision for Ireland’s future.

IT is one of Ireland’s key industry sectors and we are known for our early adoption of new IT solutions. Known for centuries as the island of saints and scholars and proud of our literary giants like James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Koizumi Yakumo to name but a few, we are now applying the same skills to software and IT - five of the top ten ICT companies in the world have significant operations in Ireland.

We are fast becoming an e-society and the government is committed to providing the necessary supports to ensure this continues. As Keidanren is particularly interested in the promotion of e-government and in the overhaul of your social security system, it will be of interest that Ireland’s largest indigenous software company, Curam, offers one of the most advanced e-solutions in the world for social welfare government departments.

Ireland shares the Keidanren’s view on the importance of technological innovation and appreciates the value of maintaining a commitment to investment in innovation and research and development in the current difficult and very challenging global economic environment. Last year the Irish Government pledged €8.2 billion towards scientific and technological research up until 2013.

In recent years, we have been particularly focussed on commercialisation of R&D and much of our investment will be in collaboration projects between our universities, and industry. We actively support international collaboration on these projects.

We encourage collaboration in innovation, between academia and industry and between domestic and international organisations. We invite Japan to collaborate with us on this.

We particularly want to collaborate with Japan on trade. Part of our objective in this trade mission is to promote to Irish business the opportunities and advantages of doing business with Japan. We also want to highlight to Japan the capabilities, flexibility and innovative nature of Irish companies. We very much hope that this will lead to opportunities of significant mutual benefit.

I will now ask Frank Ryan, CEO of Enterprise Ireland, to talk to you about its role in developing indigenous Irish industry.