New Export Trade Council includes private sector

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore TD is heading up this initiative and attendees at the first meeting last September included Martin Shanahan, chief executive of Forfás; chief executive of Tourism Ireland Niall Gibbons, Barry O’Leary, IDA Ireland chief executive; and Aidan Cotter, chief executive of Bord Bia.

From the private sector Danny McCoy, director general of IBEC; Pól Ó Móráin of Enterprise Lab; and Ruth Andrews of the Irish Tour Operators Association were also there along with Whelan.

“The Export Trade Council is providing a very useful forum where the export industry can come face to face at one round table with Government ministers and senior civil servants as well as the heads of the State promotional agencies and review, question and advise on policy actions that are being developed, or need to be developed, to enable an export-led recovery in the economy to be effectively delivered on,” says Whelan.

“At the first meeting of the Trade Council, I asked for and received re-affirmation that the key focus of the Export Trade Council was and would be implementing the ‘Strategy for Trade , investment and Tourism to 2015’ .”

The key aspects of this strategy are:

• Increase the value of exports of indigenous exporters by 33pc in the five years from January 2011 to December 2015.
• Diversify the destination of indigenous exports to countries other than the UK. Currently 56pc of food and drink exports go to the UK, which has created major problems for the sector as margins have been eroded each time the Bank of England has carried out quantitative easing to effectively depreciate Sterling against the euro. And this is expected to continue through 2012.
• Increasing the share of Asian markets for Irish exports, in particular food and drink exports. The strategy calls for a 60pc increase in the food and drink exports to Asia over the five years to 2015.

Jobs are also heavily tied into the strategy, with a target of 150,000 direct jobs being created by export industry and a further 150,000 jobs being created indirectly by export growth, to give a total of 300,000 new jobs being created by the export-led strategy . 

IDA companies are to create 75,000 direct jobs, Enterprise Ireland 60,000 jobs and Tourism Ireland the remaining 15,000 jobs over the period to 2015.

Whelan stated at the meeting that this was a very ambitious target and would need detailed targeting actions and progress monitoring by the Export Trade Council.

A streamlined visa system

One of the early initiatives Whelan called for was a streamlined visa system based on installing biometric measuring equipment in each of the Irish embassies abroad, using the same system as that currently installed in the British embassies worldwide.

“This system is the basis of the temporary deal with the British government which has been put in place for the period of the Olympics and which I have been reliably informed by UK sources would enable the visa deal for the Olympics to be extended indefinitely,” he explains.

“This is the single one trade facilitation action by Government that would significantly assist IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and Tourism Ireland and their client companies to reach their targets under the strategy.”

“This issue came up again at the Global Diaspora conference in Dublin Castle as a key recommendation across all the group sessions and An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD has committed to coming up with a visa solution by March 2012,” he says.

The Tánaiste has emphasised the importance of the new council adding value rather than duplicating existing work. It will meet two to three times a year and if necessary working groups or teams will be set up to address specific issues that come to the attention of the council. The Tánaiste will report annually to the Government on the council’s progress.