 Welcome everyone to those of you who are here and those joining online. The majority as usual these days, but particularly thanks to Martin Shannon. Martin is a partner at Heavy Industry and FDI at Grant Ford in Ireland. He's been in that role for I think a month. Before that, over a good number of years, excuse me, I'm slightly out of breath after bounding up the stairs there. He, as you all know, ran what is arguably the most successful government agency that has existed in perhaps in the history of the state, IDA Ireland, over a difficult time and then a possibly easier time with different challenges. So he's going to talk to us today about some of those challenges, some of the opportunities as well for such the sector that is so vital for the economic success and prosperity of the Irish economy. Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Delighted to be back at the IAEA. Thanks to Dan for the invite here today and to address you. As the title suggests, I am going to speak to you about whether FDI is a continuing opportunity or a growing challenge. So spoiler alert at this stage, I'm not going to keep you in suspense. I believe foreign direct investment is a continued opportunity for this country, but we face many challenges in continuing to attract and grow the existing multinational companies that are here. Since Ireland opened up to trade and investment from the 1950s onwards, foreign direct investment has been overwhelmingly positive for this state. It has moved us from a country that was inward looking protectionist and poor to a modern society with a globalized high growth economy. I'm going to remind you of some of the contributions that FDI make to the economy because I think it's really important that everything else that is said is put in that context. There are now close to 1800 multinational companies operating here. Those companies employ directly over 300,000 people and have a significant employment multiplier effect on the economy. So there are lots of indigenous jobs dependent on lots of multinational jobs. Exporting multinationals spend over 30 billion directly in the economy every year, but 19 billion of that is pay and then the rest is materials and services procured from Irish companies. Capital expenditure is a bit more lumpy but it runs to about between 7 and 10 billion per annum over the last number of years. Multinationals are responsible for about 315 billion worth of exports and those companies that we're talking about are responsible for 80% of all corporate tax taken this economy and an estimated 40% of all income tax collected in the economy is from employees of multinational companies. These are extraordinarily strong figures in the context of a small economy like Ireland. Our industrial development model has been to attract inward investment to support Irish companies to export and to help them scale and for the state to invest in innovation research and development. And that industrial model has worked and the FDI part of it in particular has worked. The single biggest threat to that industrial model and the FDI model that we've employed in this country over recent decades in my view is complacency. Ireland has no inherent right to the foreign direct investment that we win on an annual basis. The clue is in the fact that it has to be one. We have to be competitive as a country in order to do that. In my view, too much time is spent handling about whether we are too dependent on FDI or whether corporation tax receipts will continue. Where the balance of focus and discussion should be is on how we ensure that global companies see Ireland as a competitive and compelling location within which to invest. The recipe for winning investment is known. Ireland has excelled in this space. However, I feel that success is now taken for granted. It appears that a future or alternate scenario where we do not have such investment is absent from the general consciousness. For those of us who grew up in the 60s, 70s or 80s, we know what that alternative looks like. And those memories and associated pictures are not pleasant, they're not pretty. And when we take, in my view, job growth for granted, we have lost our way. There is so much to be optimistic about. FDI most recently was responsible for bringing us out of the global financial crisis. Most recently, even in the last year, we have seen, during the pandemic, FDI drove the economy. And in the last year, even during significant reset in particular sectors, FDI has continued to perform with really substantial announcements, even in the first six months of this year from my former colleagues in IDA. And substantial in the sense that substantial capital investment, substantial employment associated with them, and in many cases going into regional locations. It's just about, I suppose, what matters. And in the first instance, the global economy matters. We are one of the most global globalized economies in the world. The challenges I think have been well rehearsed, but just quickly, global political uncertainty, countries and economic or political blocks seeking strategic autonomy. This is an open question as to whether globalization will continue, is stalled, or is indeed in reverse. If there is to be further globalization, what form will it take? Regionalization does seem to be on the rise. Ireland is heavily integrated into global value chains. A deconstruction or redesign of those value chains could present both opportunities and challenges. The prospect that Ireland and others will increasingly have to come down on one side or the other in a polarized world. And we have very significant geopolitical issues obviously on our own doorstep in Eastern Europe with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. High inflation and higher interest rates to combat that inflation will have an overall depressing impact on consumer sentiment and demand and economic growth. And those impacts will vary across the various sectors and we're seeing that already. Just yesterday we've seen the SRI downgrade its forecast for growth in Ireland based on subdued levels of growth in exports from the farm and chemical sector. Having said that, you know, I think that report also points to how strong the underlying growth in the Irish economy is. And we have a situation where we have historic low unemployment as you know, hovering around 3.8%. You know, unimaginable to those of us that were looking at this back post the financial crisis and trying to figure out how growth would come back into this economy. That has been true at the technology sector reset. I say being true it's still ongoing and it is very painful for those who are directly involved in that and those that have lost roles. I think it's important to say that technology sector is diffuse. And, you know, there are many elements within that from semiconductors to software to the platform companies which are probably the ones that have been most impacted in recent times. I think it's important we distinguish between the short term challenges for that sector and the long term challenges for this long term growth prospects for the sector. And I think those long term growth prospects remain strong. There are lower global flows of foreign direct investment. Global flows of foreign direct investment haven't yet returned to pre pandemic levels. So we're not yet back at 2019 levels of foreign direct investment globally. So that means we, Ireland, like others are fishing in a smaller pool and have to, in order even to maintain the amount of investment that we've seen previously, one has to win market share. As identified by the National Competitiveness Council, the cost of doing business here is increasing. There's no I think great surprise there. And some of that is driven by global issues, but some aspects that are also domestic issues and again, disaggregating the two I think is important. You know, the twin challenges of digitalization and climate action present again both opportunities and challenges and I've got to come back to that in a little while. What we do domestically is even more important. And, and we have challenges here too. These challenges can be characterized as carrying capacity issues of the economy, resulting from the failure of infrastructure, keeping pace with the faster and anticipated growth of the Irish economy since the global financial crisis and indeed property bubble in late 2000s. Those issues they include housing, energy, water, and, and general infrastructure need and issues relating to planning and the delivery of infrastructure, both for government infrastructure and for the plant and facilities of multinational companies, and indeed indigenous companies I should say, more than anything else, this runs the risk of curtailing new investment and the expansion plans of multinational companies. I mean to put it simply at the moment, we do not have all of the options that we could be offering to investors and we should be offering to investors available to us because of those infrastructural constraints. We also have increasing issues relating to the supply of talent, although relatively speaking I think Ireland has done well at aligning the output of our education system with the needs of companies and attracting highly skilled talent to Ireland. It is imperative that our third level sector is appropriately funded to deliver the required output at the required level. It is our ability to attract and try to grow in the first instance our own talent to attract talent and retain talent that will dictate our success in the future in both growing Irish businesses and the ability to attract FTI. The cost and availability of housing is a serious deterrent to those that wish to make a home and work in Ireland. And this is and will act as a drag on future investments and the ability of existing investors to grow within Ireland. Much of the political discussion I expect between now and budget 2024 2024 will be on the size of the budget on the balance between tax cuts and additional expenditure and within that who gets what. Unfortunately, there will be much less interest and attention on the measures designed to keep the economy performing at the extraordinarily high levels, it has been performing at. That is where all stakeholders should be focusing their attention. We need to execute on those issues that I've referred to in order to continue to make progress economically and societally because ultimately it is what will dictate how big the pie is to share in the future. FTI has options. If Ireland doesn't deliver companies can go elsewhere. An albeit that FTI has proven extraordinary sticking I think that is important to say, never has the global competition for FTI been so intense. While Ireland continues to outperform relative to our size, other countries are making themselves more attractive within Europe we have seen countries like France, Spain, Portugal move off the FTI rankings. We see the levels of subsidy supports for FTI across the globe increasing and particularly significant supports for large scale investments in manufacturing semiconductors green economy projects. It is a very, very crowded marketplace at this point. We have seen countries that have not demonstrated a sure footed approach to their economy suffer from lower levels of green field investment. And by contrast, Ireland continues to be seen as stable politically and economically and very stable from an enterprise policy perspective and this is a very significant strength and its importance should not be underestimated. There are other big issues that we need to consider. The future of work will be different. I spent last week in San Francisco, a city that has seen its challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. It is struggling to rejuvenate its city center and the increasing number of empty office blocks tells the story of employees who have not yet returned to the office. Perhaps never will. This is in contrast to the objectives of their large employers who once occupied these buildings and who believe that some attendance at the office is required for reasons of productivity or training or developing one's organizational culture and indeed also for the mental health of employees. The experience is different in Ireland with higher levels of office attendance and I think we can see the increasing level of office attendance in Dublin. But some of these issues we will also have to grapple with and there's much thought required I think as to how we design cities and towns for employers and employees in the future. There are always going to be new opportunities in new sectors and sub sectors and with new products and services coming on stream. If the leaders of the technology sector that I met and listened to last week or to be believed we are all going to be supported by our own personal EI in the future which will be emotionally intelligent. I'm very much looking forward to this I have to tell you. While apps like chat GBT have raised the consciousness of what might be possible, all agree I think at this point that we're only scratching the surface of this. The use cases for AI are likely to grow and grow and Ireland has to remain nimble in order to avail of the opportunities that developments like this can deliver. We have done a good job I think and I am somewhat biased here in the past it being very fast followers in areas of technological innovation and we need to continue to do that and of course there will be impacts from these new technologies. There will be new jobs created that we haven't and can't imagine at the moment and there will be displacement of existing jobs and that will need to be managed. We also need to use our voice in Europe to ensure that the new new areas are appropriately regulated in order to protect citizens, while at the same time proportionately regulated to allow for innovation. There is huge potential in areas coming back to the twin transitions in areas like offshore wind. The offshore wind opportunity has the ability to both meet our growing domestic energy demands, help us to meet our sustainability targets, provide new export markets and could drive a whole new wave of industrial development again if captured properly. Again, nimbleness and speed of execution is what will dictate our success or not in areas like this. Hopefully you can tell from the picture that I am painting, I believe there are opportunities and amounts of risks and our success will be dependent on our ability to meet those challenges that I've outlined with haste and execute on the plans that largely are in existence. Ireland has done an amazing job of industrial development over recent decades. The attraction of FDI has obviously been at the centre of that. There's every reason I believe that we can continue to attract significant investment and I remain very optimistic. Thank you very much.