‘I want to congratulate Bank of Ireland on running National Enterprise Week,” the Lord Mayor of Dublin Gerry Breen told the audience at special breakfast briefing held in the House of Lords on Dublin’s College Green 10 days ago. “It is initiatives like this which will help us exit the no man’s land we find ourselves in at the moment.”
The event, which kicked off National Enterprise Week and also formed part of the Innovation Dublin Festival, also heard from Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan, who outlined a number of key areas where Ireland’s future prosperity might lie.
“We’ve got to get out of there,” said the Lord Mayor. “ I think our former Taoiseach John Bruton summed up the current situation very well recently when he said that five years ago, you couldn’t say anything negative about the economy and now you can’t say anything positive. We have to move on from there and focus on the positive things that are happening.”
Among the positive developments he pointed to was the country’s recent export performance. “Exports grew 7 per cent in the first half of 2010. That’s very good news. So, can we move on please? I have had my own business for the past eight-and-a-half years and I know what it’s like. But we have to be more positive and take action to help ourselves. We have a lot of people going on about the authority of the State to govern itself and all that sort of stuff, but we’re getting into the realms of what the Romans did for us there. We have to be more innovative and look for new ways to grow our businesses.”
Minister Eamon Ryan acknowledged the current difficulties facing the country, but also pointed to opportunities for growth. “We shouldn’t underestimate the exceptionally challenging times we are in,” he said. “But there are six things we can concentrate on for future growth – three of them physical and three of them based on our people.”
He identified food, tourism, energy, information and communications technology, life sciences, and financial services as growth areas. “Food is a €6 billion industry and is a green business with great potential; tourism is worth €5 billion annually to the economy, and it is an area where we have proven strengths and a very flexible and enterprising business sector,” he said. “ In the energy area, there is a huge import substitution opportunity for the fossil fuels we import each year if we reach the target of generating 40 per cent of our energy from renewable sources by 2020. There is also the potential to become a net exporter of renewable energy.
“There are also tremendous opportunities for Ireland in the people-based sectors of life sciences, ICT and financial services,” Minister Ryan said. “I commend Bank of Ireland for National Enterprise Week and its work on supporting business and getting the economy moving.”
Bank of Ireland director of business banking Mark Cunningham pointed to the aims of National Enterprise Week. “It is all about demonstrating Bank of Ireland’s commitment to supporting business and making business aware of what Bank of Ireland can do for it. As of the end of October, we had already advanced upward of €3 billion in business lending in the Republic of Ireland this year.
National Enterprise Week is getting the message across that we are there to support business and it demonstrates the commitment of our staff to supporting businesses and their communities.”
