It is a great pleasure for me to meet with you to celebrate the growing trade links between Ireland and Austria. As Ambassador Donoghue mentioned, this is the first time that an Irish Minister has visited Austria for St. Patrick’s Day.
I am delighted to have this opportunity to meet senior Austrian business people with an interest in Ireland and I would like to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to be with us. Let me wish you all a very traditional Irish “Céad Mile Failte” – a hundred thousand welcomes.
The key purpose of my visit to Austria is to raise further the profile of Ireland as a world-class supplier of products and services.
It is appropriate that we should be able to offer you some hospitality on this day when Irish people all over the world join with friends of Ireland in celebrating our national holiday. Before we taste some Irish smoked salmon and premium beef, I would like to say a few words to place today’s lunch in context.
For the past 10 to 15 years, the Irish economy has become one of the fastest growing in the industrialised world. Our average income per head now stands at around 140 per cent of the European Union average, as compared to the 1980s, when it equalled just 65 per cent of the EU average.
Our economy is set to expand at a rate of up to 5 per cent per annum in real terms until the end of the decade. Our unemployment rate is projected to remain below 4.5 per cent and inflation remains moderate in EU terms at just under 2 per cent.
Instead of mass emigration, now, for the first time in over 150 years, more people are coming to Ireland than are leaving, and the population is increasing steadily. Since 1 May 2004, we have welcomed around 140,000 people from the 10 newest EU Member States. The Ireland of tomorrow will be an ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan society.
We now have a dynamic, high-technology, export-led, globalised economy. Many Irish companies are global players serving global customers in niche roles, especially in the knowledge-intensive industries of Information and Communications Technology.
Ireland’s competitiveness is increasingly based on knowledge, innovation, flexibility and the ability to work together with international partners and customers.
Foreign Direct Investment has played a major role in our success. Over 1,050 overseas companies have chosen Ireland as their European base and are involved in a wide range of activities in sectors as diverse as Information Communications Technologies, Biotechnology and globally traded services.
Ireland is now one of the world’s key locations for pharmaceutical and medical devices and practically all the top international companies in these sectors have invested in Ireland.
The fact that foreign companies choose to locate in Ireland is due to our business-friendly environment, our well educated, flexible workforce, our corporate tax structure and our commitment to quality.
The single most important factor in our success has been our investment in education.
The achievement of ending mass unemployment and mass emigration could not have been realised without the dramatic increase in participation at second and third-levels that began almost forty years ago.
We started off with one of Europe’s lowest rates of completion of secondary education. Today, by contrast, we have one of the highest rates of third-level qualifications in the EU – almost one in four Irish adults holds a third-level qualification.
Our continued success depends critically on our ability to move to higher value activities and on becoming a truly world-class, knowledge-based economy.
In recent years, significant investment has been made in developing the research capabilities and skills of our third-level colleges, in particular through the Government’s Science Foundation Ireland programme.
We are aiming to attract leading researchers from all over the world, with a particular focus on biotechnology and Information and Communication Technologies.
The Irish Government is shortly to launch a major Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation to cover the period 2006 to 2013. The strategy aims to further promote Ireland as a research & development base and to attract investment and many more top quality researchers.
Foreign direct investment provided the stimulus for Irish entrepreneurs to get moving, with the result that start-up business activity in Ireland is one of the strongest in Europe.
Over the past 10 years, the main thrust of Ireland’s economic, industrial and export growth has come from indigenous Irish enterprise. As a very open economy, exporting 85% of what we manufacture, Ireland must remain outward-looking.
Dynamic, Irish-owned companies and organisations have become our star performers in export markets and last year achieved a record €11 billion in overseas sales.
High-technology and software products now account for a massive 41% of all exports.
Ireland is the single biggest exporter of software solutions in Europe and one of the top three software exporters in the world. We want to deepen our economic relations with other vibrant economies such as Austria.
Austria’s membership of the European Union, the vibrancy of its industrial, commercial and innovation sectors, the development of its own knowledge economy market, and its strengths in key sectors such as telecoms, banking, and engineering make it a very attractive option for Irish companies seeking new markets for their products or services.
Irish companies are not simply looking at exporting goods and services to Austria. Rather, working together with Enterprise Ireland - the trade and technology board of the Irish Government - they are focussed on the development of long-term relationships and of a real partnership between our two economies and our two countries.
I hope that this lunch will help you to develop existing relationships, to make new contacts, and to deepen the partnership between Austria and Ireland.
Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh go léir. Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Enjoy your meal.
Ends