 Okay, so we're now live on YouTube with two minutes to go. Okay Dan, 30 seconds. Okay, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. We're going live. Good morning. I'm Dan O'Brien, the Chief Economist here at the Institute of International and European Affairs. You're very welcome to this. The third in a series of events, organized, co-organized with Enterprise Ireland, the government agency charged with boosting indigenous companies, foreign sales of goods and services. The focus of this series is Europe is our future. We've directed very much to focus on the opportunities that exist in the Eurozone and wider EU single market, huge successes for Irish businesses over the decades, but still compared to say the UK. On a per capita basis, we still export more to the UK than we do into continental Europe, which suggests given the lack of barriers to that market, there is still huge opportunities for companies to exploit the continental market. And that's the purpose of the series is to highlight the opportunities and ways of dealing with the challenges of doing better in that market. Today we'll have, we'll start with our keynote speaker, Phil Hogan, who I'll introduce in a minute. We will then go to Patrick Hawkins, who is one of Enterprise Ireland's leading figures within, in Long the Continent. He's the manager for France. He will give an overview from his perspective. And then we'll be joined by a panel of three senior business people who'll talk about their experiences of their companies in the European market. So, without further ado, let me introduce Phil Hogan who doesn't need much introduction, I think to most people, a former trade commissioner until 2020. One of the most important jobs in the European Commission. Before that he was agriculture commissioner for five years, a trade heavy portfolio as well. And of course a held range of ministerial positions here in Ireland. So it's a pleasure to welcome you back to the Institute. Phil, thanks for giving us your time this morning and look forward to to your perspectives on the subject over to you. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and I'm very pleased to join you this morning and many thanks to the IEA and Enterprise Ireland for the invitation. And I want to start by congratulating you on this time the initiative because it's very opportune moment to look at the single market and Ireland's potential in the single market. Because this January we celebrate 50 years of our membership with the European Union, and we also celebrate 30 years of membership with the single market. And the single market already has been important to Ireland's economic and social development. We have a very dynamic, we have a very open, we have a highly globalized economic model here in Ireland. And I think Ireland has made good use of the privilege access to the marketplace of 450 million people. But in the words of senior politician some years ago, there's a lot done and more to do. And our indigenous companies in Ireland have have benefit, but we can do a lot more. And that's why this series with Enterprise Ireland and the IEA is very timely. And it's a, we have a multi-lingual European talent based of course in Ireland. You know, any of us that walk down the dots in the Grand Canal, for example, we'll understand what that means with the foreign direct investment in the companies that are there. And the five minutes walk around there shows you the multi-lingual but also the important talent that we have available here in Ireland in many of our companies. But I think the panel will explain to you later on in this event that there is still difficulties. We can do a lot more in terms of the linguistic opportunities that presents itself on the European continent. So let's hopefully we arising from this event that we can make some suggestions about how matters could be improved and how state agencies or government or indeed companies can do better. A few figures, the European Union has accounted for 40% of total Irish goods exports in September 2022. Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands remain the largest export destinations for those products. And the EU has accounted for 35% of total Irish goods imports in the same month. So membership of the European Union for Ireland is a two-way street. It's worth about 30 billion euros to Ireland. But we have unexploded potential and we don't have, of course, an integrated market on services, which is not good for consumers and not good for the full benefits of what the single market can bring. So a few salient facts I think you're worth looking at. The European Union is the world's largest integrated market. That's what we're talking about. It's the jewel in the crown of the European integration. It's the engine of the European project and it's our greatest geopolitical strength on the world stage. The single market accounts for 56 million jobs in Europe, 70% of our small and medium-sized enterprises goods exports and around 25% of the EU GDP. So that's the economic backdrop of how the importance of the single market to the European Union and indeed to a country like Ireland. And even clearer way to look at this is the economic modeling around what life would be like without single market. And various economic models have indicated that for every EU citizen, there's a gain of about 500 euros a year, but it's every year. So it might not seem a lot for a lot of people, but certainly it indicates that it is a positive in any case. So the market, of course, is not perfect. The COVID-19 crisis notably highlighted a number of weaknesses. And some member states unfortunately took unilateral measures, but this led to a lack of transparency and damaged the free movement of supplies when we most needed them. And there was a lot of lessons learned from the pandemic in terms of how we can work more closely together. There were shortages of goods as well. So we have to diversify away from some model markets to create opportunities for businesses and small businesses in Europe, particularly in the health materials area in pharmaceuticals from India. And of course, we rely too much on the materials that we're getting in the health services during the pandemic from China. And of course, we have also the semiconductor issue, which particularly a large dependence on countries outside the European Union. So these are now being addressed in various programs that the European Union have launched and subsidized programs as well for companies that want to get involved in these issues. And we'll see a little bit of more reshoring of some of these essential goods and service markets into the European Union are indeed into our near neighborhood in the years ahead. So working with our national authorities and industry, the commissioners is trying to manage this negativity in terms of the experience of the pandemic. And of course, we saw during the pandemic as well the creation of green lanes. And you might see a little bit more of that with our nearest neighbor in the UK in the future. So our logistics companies were very much indigenous to course and many logistics companies in Ireland will be looking at this very closely and seeing what they have to do in order to overcome the transport of our goods around the UK, but also around the European Union. And in the context of Brexit, that's important as well. It is imperative that the single market be fully operational at all times, including at times of crisis and we need to make it stronger. So the European Union is trying to ensure that we deepen the single market, particularly when it comes to services. Consumers will expect that they'll be able to provide services in an integrated way. And we have a lot to do here in terms of the range of services that we take for granted at home that we should be able to shop around the European Union. We're not able to do that to the extent that we would like. So I suppose what are the opportunities for small businesses in Ireland as well? We should be able to benefit more from the free trade agreements that we have as part of the European Union around the world. We have 42 free trade agreements covering 72 countries. And there's a new office established now in the Commission, the Chief Trade Enforcement Office. And that helps to reduce the barriers to trade that we have in the, you know, in various countries that for one reason or another are slow about implementing what they actually agreed. And they erect artificial barriers against European and Irish companies. So working together with the Commission in that office, I would refer you to that office and there's very good annual reports available now. We'll show you where the problems have been and how they can help in the European Commission with that unit to help small companies and indeed large companies to overcome some of those barriers to trade. And we need to do more in terms of completing the Capital Markets Union for the FinTech sector. We can do a lot more in the energy sector as we see at the moment because countries don't always pull part of their sovereignty into the central European project far to help to get economies of scale, efficiencies, and indeed to get better purchasing power. If you work together, of course, as countries working together in Europe, you can get a better deal if you can buy commodities like energy. And of course, that's a critical one at the moment, which is getting everybody's attention in terms of the higher cost space is providing for our companies. Equally the supply of gas and energy products from around the world and the storage that we have to provide in the European Union are challenges now for the next. And there will be a challenge for the next few years as well. So we have recently completed the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act. So people in the tech area will be very much aware of this. The implementing guidelines now are being looked at and being implemented and guidelines can become very important. They can become legalistic. So there's a lot of study I'm sure by companies that are directly affected by these two key pieces of legislation that can have to be looked at and give legal certainty for the companies going forward in terms of how they behave. So if all of the steps that I mentioned correctly are pursued correctly, it should go somewhere towards strengthening the single market, making it easier for small businesses to raise money and to make Europe a more attractive place to invest. The new single market emergency instrument is also available to provide important tools to help the market operate efficiently in times of crisis. And there's a focus now on the services area. I think for the first time I think we see a lot of focus on how we can benefit the services area. The European Commission believes that the improvements to the functioning of the single market could generate year in year between 183 and 269 billion euros for manufactured products and 297 billion for services. These are massive figures and these are opportunities for Irish companies if we can collectively at the European level get our act together. These increases alone could raise the economic benefits to around 12% of additional GDP. So in other words, my message is Ireland should get ready to take full advantage of these improvements when they come. Of course they won't come overnight, but still we have to be keeping an eye on the potential market opportunities within Europe arising from these changes that will take place. Finally, I know this event is about the single market, but I just want to remind Irish businesses that the European Commission provides a number of supports to help companies to navigate the global marketplace and explore options for internationalization. I mentioned the Chief Trade Enforcement Office, but there's also the Access to Markets portal, which was launched last year for small businesses. And it's already providing I think some success. This gives you information and import and export conditions for European Union companies looking to export and to grow outside the European Union. And I think if small businesses develop partnerships with companies on the mainland of Europe, they can work together towards getting better access and better outcomes and good business for outside the European Union. This portal also will provide help for those wishing to import as well as for third country operators wishing to export to the European Union. It provides information and access to third country procurement markets as well. So this Access to Markets portal is very user-friendly. It has won awards for the design that's already had over 1 million users. So I'd encourage Irish companies, especially SMEs, to at least have a look. So ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to conclude there. I want to wish you the best for this event and the best look to the small businesses that are working hard every day to provide opportunities for jobs in each of our localities. Right around Ireland. So thank you very much then. Many thanks for that, Phil. Phil has agreed to stay on. So at the bottom of your screen, you'll see a Q&A function. If you click on that, you can write in a question if you have a specific question for Phil. So please feel free to put a question over the next few minutes. And indeed, over the rest of the event, if you have a question for the panelists, use that function to the bottom of your screen Q&A. Simply type in the question you have or the point you wish to make and hit the send button. I'll pick it up over here and moderate those questions. If I can just come back to you, Phil. You mentioned there's an awful lot going on in the legislative space in the EU. There's a lot going on in terms of things like reshoring and the world's pretty crazy place at the moment. In terms of momentum towards improving the access for services in particular, which you focused on, what sort of momentum is behind that amongst the member states or is there just a limited bandwidth that countries are dealing with so many issues from inflation to war, etc. That it's gone off the boil a bit. And I think that from Brussels, give us a sense of how soon you think there might be changes in that space. As you say, they won't happen overnight, but businesses need to get a sense of what sort of timeframe these changes might come. You're quite correct and that the priorities now is the impact of the war and the consequences for companies and consequences for countries arising from the energy crisis as opposed in particular. And there is a drop off in terms of other priorities of the Commission and the single market for services is one of them. I have to say I'm very disappointed that we haven't made a lot more progress in the last five years in the European institutions in order to bring about greater opportunities for small businesses and for citizens generally to be able to, you know, see better competitiveness and competition for many of those services that we take for granted. We're not able to shop around for insurance products or just our fintech products to the extent that we would have liked in the past. You know, this was the objective in the past. So I was hopeful that during this mandate that we were going to see some significant movement forward on the single market for services. But I think it was going to be another four or five years before we see any major impact. Okay. On the issue around reshoring big concerns, maybe less concerns, more and more, just a sense that the world is de-globalizing and we won't be as connected with the rest of the world as we've been in the past, particularly parts of East Asia. Does that represent any opportunities for Europe, for Irish companies in Europe? As we sort of shorten supply chains, maybe not ideal from a pure economic perspective in terms of efficiencies, but an increased focus on security means that that reshoring trend is something that we hear more and more about. I'm wondering if you think that Europe might become more self-contained. A lot of people talking about strategic autonomy for Europe. Is that something Irish companies need to be watching both as a change that's happening and possibly an opportunity? I don't think Irish companies need to worry too much about it. I think that these world strategic autonomy, which is largely a protectionist agenda, is not going to happen at all to the extent that perhaps our friends and friends or others would like it to happen. At the end of the day, over the last number of years, we've become deeply entrenched in various markets. We've developed a lot of good partnerships in Asia and in the United States and that's going to continue. I think what we're seeing here on the reshoring aspect is where we have learned from the pandemic that we have difficulties with pharmaceutical products, difficulties in depending on the market like China for health materials, we have difficulties with semiconductors. There are specific areas where we have to do more, but they're not at the expense of any particular companies or countries in the European Union. It's just prudent to be able to say, well, we cannot have total dominance by one region of the world in terms of what we badly need at a time of crisis. And we're doing the same with energy in terms of the massive explosion and investment in renewable energy now right across the European Union is a response to the energy crisis. So Europe is being prudent and countries in Europe are being prudent in looking at the problems that have emerged in the last few years and trying to do something about them in a practical way. But companies that have developed great good partnerships in Asia, for example, where half the population in the world is going to be within a five-hour flight of Myanmar by 2035. So that's a market that's really with a huge population that's going to be very important in the future for many European companies and everybody should continue to invest in those relationships and in those opportunities. So I wouldn't lose sleep over these world strategic autonomy. We're going to continue as an Irish, Ireland is going to continue to be a highly sophisticated open economy and will require those partnerships right around the world and companies should continue to develop them. I'd just like to pick up on the Chief Trade Enforcement Office you mentioned. So this is something that companies can go, doesn't matter how big or small they are, they can go directly to this office if they feel they're not getting a fair deal in a non-EU member country, if I understand. Does that include the UK and just maybe how that works and how it benefits companies and how easy it is to use? You might just expand on that a bit. It doesn't include the UK yet, but we have embedded in the trade agreement with the United Kingdom that will include them at that stage. But we have 42 agreements with 72 countries and I set up this office because I was getting a lot of complaints from companies as I was on trade missions that there was barriers artificially being put up in order to prevent you from implementing the agreements that we had made with these particular countries and key sectors in particular. So what this office does is it receives complaints about people's experiences from countries and companies and it does its best to try and contact those counterparts in the relevant country where the problem is and see can they start it out. And sometimes it takes political intervention, sometimes it just takes an official from the European Commission to say, look, this is not fair. We have options of bringing you to a dispute resolution mechanism if you don't play ball. So I think it's something new that is starting to have an impact and perhaps if people have referred them to the annual reports come out around October and it's only two years in existence. So I think that they should look at the last two reports and see what type of reporting that they have there and experiences that the office has to date. Good, yeah. I've often heard American companies, I think they have something very similar in America for a long time and that the Americans once heard somebody saying that the equivalent office in the US will go to the country involved and start kicking down doors, a little dramatic, but that it was a very effective way for American companies if they were having a problem with a trade deal not being implemented. So maybe this is a similar kind of idea. Well, it's not. We didn't pick it up from America really, but it is a similar type of office that's required from time to time to help particularly small companies who don't have the political and economic weight behind them. This now gives the European Union weight behind the problem that exists in various marketplaces and we tried our best with the transactional methodology of trying to resolve those issues. You mentioned a couple of the big digital developments legislation lot for those of us who aren't very tech minded, it does an awful lot in those things and and what sort of opportunities they mean they mean for companies I think we'll definitely be picking up on that with the panel. Many of the panelists are involved in that space, but what sort of a big change do you think these two pieces of legislation are going to mean in the digital space? Well, if you're directly involved in the digital space in the IT space, you certainly have to engage a lot of people in order to parse and analyze what your obligations are in the future. And it's this gear that making sure that there's not a dominant position across the services for many of the big tech companies. As you know, big tech companies now are, you know, motoring on into the into the FinTech space into the payment space. And, you know, it was an effort by the European Union and the European Union is taking a leadership position globally on this in order to ensure that we continue to have some competition in this area. Because there is a fear that, you know, one or two companies will dominate the entire space in terms of all the day to day activities that we have in our personal lives will be dominated by one or two companies in terms of service providers. So I don't think that's good. And therefore the European Commissioner, Mrs. Vestager, the competition commissioner has been looking at this for a while. And what makes success has now developed these two pieces of legislation, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act to give some more competition and reassurances to consumers. Good. Good. And just a final one just to give us some sense of the mood there in Brussels. A lot of people concerns were going to recession. I'm not so convinced economies have shown huge resilience over the past two and a half years. What's the sort of mood there? Is there a feeling we can get through this or is there a feeling we're going to have to go through a recession before we come out into a better place? Well, I'm more optimistic like you Dan in terms of the economic data and the economic activity in the next year or two. I think that Ireland in particular, there's a projection of four and a half percent growth in 2024. That's a real good figure and probably will be the best in Europe again. So Ireland is certainly well placed and the Minister of Finance in the budget recently demonstrated how much firepower he had in order to help people through these difficult times with the war and with the energy issue in particular. And I think Europe certainly I don't think is expecting to get this doomsday scenario that some people paint. I think we're going to see steady as she goes but also be prudent in terms of getting through the next year. Of course, from an Irish point of view, we are watching carefully what's happening in the United Kingdom because many of our companies are trading there. Many of our companies do a lot of business there. They're not in a good place at the moment and I think the next two years in the United Kingdom is going to be difficult. And as we know, whenever the United Kingdom got a call, we got a little bit of a flu but we're not as dependent as we were. We're now able to diversify into other markets but at the same time they're a very important marketplace for us. Great. We'll look on that reasonably upbeat note. I think it's a good point to draw this section to a conclusion. Phil, thanks very much on behalf of the Institute for joining us on Enterprise Ireland. Much appreciated and your thoughts and insights on that range of issues I think was valuable for everyone. So thanks again for joining us. We've appreciated it and got plenty out of it. Thank you. So the next section we'll hand over to Patrick, who is the Enterprise Ireland's branch manager or head of country for France, obviously one of the biggest continental markets. And he's going to give us some thoughts, a short presentation from his perspective, which will tee up the panel discussion with our private sector representatives. Patrick, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Dan. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share some of my experience with the topic of today, languages. I'll do this both as a representative of Enterprise Ireland, but also tap into some experience from earlier in my career. You probably noticed already my English is not my mother tongue, so I'll bring the non-native component to the event like some of the panelists will do as well. So as you mentioned, I am with Enterprise Ireland for 14 years now. I've been head of the Benelux team for four years and I moved to Paris to become head of the Enterprise Ireland France two years ago. So I indeed throughout my career I have worked in international multilingual environments that confronted me on numerous occasions with the language issue. So I've seen multinationals struggle with the language issue internally. I've seen companies building business successfully in non-English speaking markets because they master the language issue well. But on the other side, I've seen business partnerships go wrong because the language issue was neglected. So it only illustrates the importance of the topic today. As I mentioned, I work for Enterprise Ireland in a number of markets. In the Benelux region, we're working with Irish companies in Dutch and French speaking regions with high levels of English proficiency. And now in a different context in France where mastering the local language is far more required for Irish businesses to be successful. Now one thing is for sure, mastering the language issue is not a one size fits all topic and it can take different shapes depending on the contracts you decide to target. What applies for every market though is that recognition of the importance of local languages is of paramount importance. Nelson Mandela, so I guess a wise man once put it, he said, when you speak in a language that people understand, you speak to their heads. When you speak in their own language, you speak to their hearts. And we all know how important it is to speak to people's hearts, even in a business to business context, as there is always an emotional side to a business deal. We work on Enterprise Ireland. So the mission of our agency is to accelerate the development of world-class Irish companies to achieve leading positions in global markets. So in our 40 offices around the world, we work hand in hand with Irish companies, helping them enter and scale in overseas markets. We are present with offices in nine EU countries where multilingual staff are building relationships partnerships between Irish and local businesses across different sectors. We launched a new strategy titled leading in a changing world, and we put strong focus on the need for market diversification. So the need to do business beyond the traditional export markets. Irish companies typically follow the Anglo-Saxon route with the UK and the US being the first destinations of choice. Now in recent years, due to recent developments, the interest to do business in the European single market has grown. And I heard the words from Mr. Hogan. There are obviously deals in place and they should remain in place. But we do need to remind the audience that the EU single market is the single biggest free trade area with a population of 450 million people and a GDP of 15 trillion euros. So actually seven times the size of a market such as the UK. The trade zone without borders, without customs, without tariffs, and with relative regulatory alignments. And on top of that, the Eurozone, of which Ireland obviously as part, offers the additional advantage of one currency. Now Brexit, Covid, war in Ukraine, supply chain issues, also the climate agenda. These developments do point in our opinion in the direction of doing business with nearby markets, and obviously the EU market in particular. And actually at Enterprise Ireland, we see the change happening, but we would like the rhythm to be a bit higher. So Irish businesses have been really successful at entering and scaling in EU markets over the past decades. With an all time high 8.4 billion euro turnover and an annual growth rate of 10% in 2021, the momentum is really there. And there is enough proof that non-Irish speaking, non-English speaking EU countries are open to doing business with Irish companies. Now we sometimes hear from clients, why bother dealing with the language complexity of the EU, while there is enough potential for us in English speaking markets. Now our message to them is, not only are you taking huge risk of dependence on a few markets, but more importantly, you are missing out on great opportunities. So what does it mean and you see on the screen three key areas that we think should be addressed when you want to do business in a non-English speaking country. Where does the language issue pop up and how can you address it adequately? So the three key areas we identify is first, while you're doing your market research. Secondly, while you're translating and localizing your value proposition and your messaging. And thirdly, while you're communicating with local partners throughout the customer lifecycle from prospecting over the full account management down to the customer support that you need to deliver. And there is a specific focus required on the relationship with distribution partners. So I suggest we take a closer look at these stages. When you look at the initial stage of market research, so that's the time when you try to determine whether there is a market fit for your product in this new market, it is really important to tackle the language issue early on. So the language issue is also there when you conduct desk research, you should do it in the local language, consult websites in the local language and plan exploratory conversations with local decision makers in their own language. Because the knowledge you gather will be more detailed and will be more accurate. You simply build a more solid case to build your decisions on. And too often we see companies work from generic research reports typically in English that really lack touch with the local markets. Second area, you need to make information about your product or service available in the local language. And this obviously impacts on the product itself, the packaging, user guides, sales collateral, and last but not least digital platforms such as websites and social media channels. So you should be aware that there is more involved than simple translation, use of local web domains, search engine optimization using the right industry keywords and technical language are essential to ensure matching with the local buyer community. And then finally, the third area on interactions with with local customers, we really advise our clients to do a scan of the type of interactions they will have with their local counterparts, and to determine how to handle the language issue at each stage. And that is from the first encounter between senior representatives of the companies where it may be okay to settle for English as as common language. Down to the customer support interaction between your support staff and local users of your product or service where there is even sometimes a legal obligation to use the local language. So many of our business to business clients also tackle the language issue by concluding distribution partnerships with local partners and really relying on these partners to cover local language issues. Now this is an obviously an effective way to deal with the issue. But we would still recommend that these clients build a certain level of language capability within their own company in order to keep the pulse of the end markets in house. Now one common rule at all stages of interaction is to recognize the language diversity in business communication. And this means it involves agreeing upfront on conducting meetings in a common language, thanking a non English speaking business partner to switch to a language that is not their mother tongue. So by with this I thank all the non native English speakers on on the in the audience for for accepting to have this this webinar in English. And too often the use of English as common language is taken for granted, while it is not the case in all overseas markets. A very nice example, a once picked up from an ambassador of an Asian country who addressed the French audience recently, and he started with the statement, your language is too beautiful for me to ruin it with my bad accent. Now, he immediately won the hearts of the French audience, and he really kept their respect for the remainder of his speech so he really recognized the language diversity there. Finally, when you know the needs. Now how can you address the issue. What are the resources and the supports you can call upon to arm your business for overseas markets. Well first, and probably the essential way is to increase language capability in house. So hire people with language skills on board multilingual graduates and interns invest in language training. And later on during the webinar will hear from some enterprise Ireland clients who availed of programs such as the grad start program to boost their in house language capability. Recently, I would mention, reach out to external export experts when necessary. So for crucial meetings in the negotiation process. It is worthwhile contracting an interpreter knowledgeable about your industry sector to assist your teams. As mentioned at market research stage, you can really appoint a local marketing agency to conduct interviews for you with local buyers and local digital marketing professionals can take your digital channels to the next level and generate immediate return on your investment. Third element, I would mention is leverage technological advancements. So in these days of hybrid working interpreters can be brought into your meetings virtually translation tools such as people are really approaching, I would call them satisfactory quality levels not to be used for your external sales collateral, but definitely to help your marketing team understand the conclusions of a research reports in the local language so really great advances there in terms of technological developments. And then finally obviously talk to your contract persons in the trade support agencies in enterprise Ireland in the local enterprise offices to understand the support measures that are in place to address the language issue. In enterprise Ireland, for instance, there is support at hand to hire key staff to optimize your digital environments to localize your value proposition, and so on. So in conclusion, then my recommendation would be to approach the language issue as a door opener towards opportunity, rather than a barrier to trade. With this mindset, I'm convinced that Irish companies will reap huge benefits from what we call the untapped opportunity in the EU single market, the multilingual European single market I should say. So I gladly hand over to you now and really look forward to hearing from some of the Irish companies how they handle the language issue during the panel session. Thank you very much. Thank you, Patrick. An excellent helicopter view I think of many of the issues involved there. You're going to stay with us for the panel discussion. To introduce our panel, we have Carol Dubrowski, CEO of Evie View, Merade Walsh, CMO of Softworks and Andrew Tobin CFO of Strive, all three people with extensive experience of doing business in the European market. Let's do this, offer each of the speakers a few minutes to introduce themselves, make us familiar with their companies, their experiences and their insights on this particular topic around language questions. If I could hand over to you Carol to start get the ball rolling for this panel discussion and let me also say folks that anybody who has questions. Again, I stress that Q&A function at the very bottom of your screen there. You just click it, type in your question, send and I will keep an eye on it and put it to the panel, the relevant person on the panel. So we do want this to be as interactive as possible and for participants to get as much out of it as they can by putting the specific questions that are on their minds, but before that Carol, the floor is yours for the next three to five minutes. Brilliant, thank you. Hello, everyone. It's pleasure to be here. I'm Carol Dabrowski, the CEO of Evie View Company based in Cork. Evie was founded in 2015 and it's an award-winning lean software provider as specializing in delivery of online needs in the process manufacturing industries in the areas of digital shift handover lean and process performance management. This is a business-intelligent platform designed for manufacturing plans to support their teams by shifting the knowledge upwards in order to create opportunities for improvements. Our portfolio includes impressive global blue chip clients held across pharma, biotech and chemical sector. Initially our focus was on average markets, 2015, maybe 2019. Today our clients are based in North America and across Europe, nearly whole Europe. Export became a huge part of our day-to-day operation. We are the enterprise on the client nearly since the start and during our journey, we received financial, which is so important at the early stage, but also mentoring and grant support. For example, Grad Start, Key Manager, SMR, Enter Your Zone, which were hugely helpful in our growth and setting structured goals, which actually leads as well to kind of improving our language capabilities in our team. Our platform helps large organizations that have global presence. It was an expected step to start growing organically, so let's imagine you've got a plant in Ireland that we serve very well. It's not your way to start moving out or spreading the water over us and move to Germany, to Austria, to Poland, all other countries. And that organic growth started showing a bit of lack of potential capabilities in our team. And before that, we were easily managing ourselves and delivery using English. Now delivery needs to happen using completely different language, local language, which we don't have skills in. And that was actually our journey and where we kind of came with different support as well as from Enterprise Island as well as approach that we have taken in terms of kind of acknowledging, yes, we feel at that kind of high level level with top managers using English, but then when you go get to the floor, you need to kind of speak their language. Thank you. Good. Thank you for that. Yeah, it's an interesting vital, lots of interesting points with the final point, particularly interesting. Just in terms of Carol, can I just a quick follow up question in terms of the markets you entered, which ones did you go for first and why? The first market, actually, it was a natural choice. I won't surprise you guys, it was Poland. So, just through my connections as well, kind of connections in the region, we've been able to acquire the largest Polish farmer manufacturer located in the north side of Poland with a number of sites. And that was the very first implementation that happened. So initially, that was kind of myself helping out and kind of try to understand, but straight away, let's face it, see you cannot do that. It became very obvious I need to get help. And where we kind of started to that initial journey in English in the back because our self-esteem as well was involved, etc. And the whole Irish. Then at some point where we kind of start meeting people from middle management where maybe kind of the English language wasn't natural or was a bit kind of causing difficulty. And it was very hard to get the message across and message back. We're kind of jumping directly to Polish and then straight away. So it was a natural close of us looking at finding the right people that can support the market. Then straight away the second market that we naturally growth and that was through the organic growth and that's a big part of our life today. Today is Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where we grow our system and therefore kind of obviously we at this point we kind of knew that this is coming. So the minute it happened, we kind of start looking for the German speaking team members to join our team to support it alone. Thank you. Interesting insights there. Maread, can we go over to you and floor is yours. Sure. Good morning. And thank you for having me. And I work for softworks and we're an Irish technology company and in business is 1990. So we're knocking knocking around for a long time now and have a lot of success. I actually just tell you what we do. We provide workforce management solutions to explain that a little bit further. And that's what companies use to manage their employees time attendance, the rosters, absences, HR, all of those, all of those areas. And we operate very successful in Ireland and the UK for a number of years. And recently we've been looking at more of the export markets. So we work across all industries and we're particularly successful in the industry such as healthcare, retail, public sector, manufacturing, lots and lots of customers, particularly across Ireland and the UK. And we are registered in the UK as a company as well. So in some ways it makes it a little bit easier than other companies, you know, with with Brexit. So we started looking at some new markets and right in COVID when it was planned before COVID. So it was a challenging time to start deciding to expand out into new markets. So the markets we looked at were the US, we already had a small presence in Canada, and as well as that Germany and Italy, and with the two markets that we decided to centre on. And we were lucky enterprise Ireland and we had grants from their market discovery grants, we're able to do our research and decide why and, you know, look at competition, look at where the gaps were. Look to see if we had to localise our product, what that was going to mean for us, all of that. So we had done all our research, we knew these were good markets for us. We also had hired local people on the ground. So that was great. So we did have language skills on the ground sales people to work for us. However, the marketing department, we were a little bit lacking. And so we discovered as a marketing department, we had sales people waiting for leads and a marketing department that didn't speak the language. It didn't know how to enter these markets. We were all to the middle of COVID. So there was no events going on that we could send our sales teams to. And so we had to decide very quickly how we were going to feed this team with leads. So, immediately, the obvious thing is digital. And we had an English speaking website, a very large website, may I say, and we looked to localize that. And so not just translate, you know, we could have said to the sales guys here when you translate that page by page, but that wouldn't have worked because with web, obviously you have to have the right keywords you need somebody to do that research. So that when people are searching for products, they're searching for the right right product and to be able to find us in, for example, a small thing, you know, when in Ireland and England, we would call it rostering, say for for schedules for people, whereas in the US and Canada, they don't. So we have to have different language, even in English speaking countries. So Germany and Italy posed a whole new challenge for us. Well, we took it on. We were very lucky. And we've got a great company in Cork, TWI, you were able to localize our websites for us. They did all of the translation work, all of the keyword research, all of the in context analysis afterwards when the website went live to make sure it made sense to everybody. Also, I suppose having the sales guys on the ground was good because you did have local people again, you know, to be able to look at it. For us, that's that's how we we I suppose entered those markets and started generating leads and it was so so important for us if we hadn't. I mean, we hadn't done it. The marketing team would have been sitting there, you know, with nothing to offer to ourselves team. And, you know, in the first year when it went live in 2021, 90% of our leads for Italy came through our website or new website, and about 50% for Germany. Germany as a country, they do a lot of trade shows, as you all probably know. So some shows did go ahead. So we did manage to get some leads through those. And now that everything is open again, we're probably getting about 50% of our leads through our website. And the rest is through other marketing programs that we do. But even searching for a marketing perspective, you know, as mentioned earlier, if you're on Google in Ireland trying to search for ways you can market your products in Germany and Italy, you're not getting the right search results. So you need somebody to help you with that. And we got a lot of help from the market advisors in the countries as well. So if anyone's looking at that, I would really recommend you reach out. They were great for able to, you know, give us advice, even down to shows that might be good for us, publications we might like to work with, all of that. So we got a lot of help from Enterprise Ireland in our journey along the way into those countries. And I suppose again, in terms of the results now when I look at our Google analytics, I can see the traffic from our countries. Number one is the US followed by the UK and Ireland, which makes perfect sense. Then we've got Germany, then we've got Italy and then there's other countries. So we can see what we're doing and the difference that has made to us in terms of new business we've gained in those countries, and 50% of the new business can be attributed back in both countries. Actually, it's quite interesting looking at it, can be attributed back to what we've done through our website. So the leads have come in. You know, we measure everything. So any time the lead comes in, we'll say where did you hear this or whatever. So that comes through Google. We do choose an agency local in Germany as well to help with the Google paid advertising. So again, like was being said earlier, it's well worth hiring somebody on the ground for small parts of it as well that are very, very specific to that country. So look, it was challenging and it was quite frightening, you know, because you were in the middle of COVID and you're going, how are we all going to handle this? But luckily, you know, it has worked out really, really well for us. We've got new customers coming in now in the new countries and you feel like it's never going to come, but it does all come together. And the guys are we project managers out there now, we have the sales team out there and we're, you know, we're and it's ongoing, I suppose with language and localization, you know, where we actually just recently refreshed our website. Websites are like fashion that keep changing all the time and you've got to be on top of it. So again, TWIR localization company have now are now doing that all that again for us. And just this week, actually, we got signed off to Transator website in Spanish as well. So yeah, so we haven't actively hired anyone in Spain yet, but we still get a lot of inquiries, you know, from from any country, you know, around the world. We recently got a new customer in Guyana and that's not me pronouncing Ghana wrong, you know, Guyana inside America. And so you just don't know where you're going to get customers from. So, you know, you just need to have your website localized. It needs to be there. You've got to be out there. You've got to be seen. And, you know, once you once you have that that that is the way, you know, for for marketing, and we've got to be all over. So, so yeah, that's that's after it started today. Right. Right. Thanks for that. Just a question in terms of how you the human resources side of this. You mentioned you take on people in the target market. I'm wondering just, you know, contractually what kind of arrangements do you have do you try and for example for the Spanish market. Find a Spanish speaker living in Ireland and employ them on that basis. Do you employ a Spaniard in Spain on a on a on a on a, you know, sort of on a contract. What have you found the best way or do you mix it up or just. Absolutely mix it up. Yeah, because because interesting enough, and when it came to Italy, we had an employee working with us, and a really, really strong person started in training with project management from Italy, and he wanted to move home. And so, so we employed him then he wanted to go into sales and he's brilliant because he can demo the product so much better than somebody if we tried to teach them we couldn't have, you know, he was a trainer as well as a project manager. So he knows the product so well, he knows what takes in the project so he's getting lots of new customers now. He's employing his own project management team that will implement that so having those skills within softworks and moving somebody out of another country is amazing and we're doing that with another employee actually, who works in our UK side of the business. He also works in sales. He wanted to move to the States he wants to move to Texas I'm not sure why, but that that is his choice. And we are sponsoring him and going through the process of getting him a work visa for the United States. In Germany we hired somebody on the ground Germany was a little bit interesting, because we had gone for a tender, and for it for a company we went up against, you know, big competition, both in Germany and internationally, and we won. And at that stage we didn't have much language skills at all. And Mark the manager that works with me had done German in college and between herself and an English speaking head of sales managed to get the tender together. And so we did win it. And it was then we did employ somebody local in Germany, and at that stage. So yeah so look a bit of a mix I mean we do love people that come up through the roots through softworks they have our same values they understand the company, and the way that we work so it is a huge advantage if the right fit is there, but obviously we're still employing people in the other countries as well. Right. Thanks my ride. Good. And our third panelist Andrew floors yours. Hi. Thanks Dan. And so I'm Andrew towing the CEO of strive. And we're a cloud and cybersecurity company. And so the types of services we are and solutions we provide our infrastructure as a service hosting online immutable backups that are ransomware proof. So this is this concept of a server fail servers fail in one jurisdiction we can get get you up and running live again within seconds in a different jurisdiction. And then on the cybersecurity side of things we're doing quite high end specialist type of worker on penetration testing ethical hacking red team exercises where we physically break into buildings and steal data. And so we have different kinds of cyber risk assessments looking at companies cyber security posture and then looking at remediation around that. So, and our journey is strive was founded in 2019, we brought to a smaller long, long standing SMEs here in Ireland together rebranded strive and over the last, I suppose two years three years similar to Maria during the pandemic. Two offices in the UK in Poland, two offices in Poland, we have an office in Morocco, and we're close to getting up and running I would say in Holland as well at the moment. And our team has grown from say 20 people last year to about 60 people this year. You know, we're anticipating some of you know 100 and 120 next year turnover wise two million after six million this year we're on track for 12 to 15 million next year. So just to kind of give you in terms of trajectory and kind of where we're going we're rapidly growing it tech tech company. Other types of clients would be governments and distribution companies legal financial it's quite a wide range you know, and we're even this year we've picked up quite a few awards in terms of what we're doing. And a few weeks ago we won an international cyber security tasks or Tress and Task Force award a cybersecurity your EU cybersecurity company of the year, which was a real pat in the back in terms of our journey across Europe. And we picked up an in business chambers Ireland award earlier this year for cybersecurity compliance, and we're up for a technology Ireland awards nice actually open the mansion house in Dublin so I'm going to don the, the black tie shortly actually and just head for a head for and so in terms of why international office and maybe why Poland is our first office and we identified a huge opportunity in terms of cloud in Europe, in that most of the main cloud players are actually American providers. So if you think of it, you know, like our day to day competitors funny enough and they wouldn't see us as a competitor because we're so insignificant and small at the moment is Microsoft Azure. It's Amazon AWS, it's Google's platform and all these guys Salesforce and Dell and IBM etc etc and the common word with all of those is America, they're American companies and brand America has lost a lot of credibility over the last few years. So, with that in mind as well as single out this opportunity that you know what does no one stick in their hand up in Europe say we're Europe's guy just Europe's out and out guy and become a household name within Europe. Okay. So, if you think of the psychology behind that then. And, you know, we've had a, give you examples such as that we've had the EU Commission themselves recently have moved quite a lot of data into us and the remit from their legal team was they can no longer use an American provider, because of the bylaws brought into their Trump's tenor. Brexit created huge opportunities for us and that's why we scampered into setting up a UK office so we could have data reside that we've you know data in the UK, and on the land island of UK and likewise in Ireland. And remember one one legal practice a good client of ours here in Ireland, large legal practice were acquired by global practice HQ'd out of London, and they taught they just wrap all the it back into into London. They're just blasé but under Irish kind said no, we want our data here in Ireland. And the last example to give us that we had a company in Ukraine come to us literally once the war started, and to say look, we want our data in the EU. We, you know, we want to make everyone would would I suppose we want safety for our data. So they were quite happy to run with our Polish data presence center presence at that stage, you know, so that's kind of gives you an insight into the international expansion. We, in terms of Poland, we had a tech office there anyway one of our co founders and shareholders is Polish guy Anna Ciendubi. And so we had a, we had a small tech office there are four or five guys. Someone, Anna's new over in Poland was a senior telecoms guy. And he wanted to set up his own company and he loves the brand strive and what we were about and one of you so he said look, how about I would launch this for you here in Poland and we, we came up with an arrangement where Daniel has some skin in the game he's put some into himself Daniel good that he's an excellent, excellent guy. And he's been usually successful. And this is nice to kind of leads into the link with Enterprise Ireland because on the ground. You know, obviously enterprise Ireland have offices in most of the European countries are all of the European countries and across the world. One of the guys Bartek gave us an introduction to a supplier in Poland. We got exclusivity on a tender on a public tender. And we got our first large tender which was a quarter million euro contract literally last year which was a fantastic launchpad. You know, and we've won more tender since then so like in Poland alone will do a million euro turnover this year from a standing start less than a year and a half ago. And then I would say, you know, just trying to look through my notes here now sorry. Like, Enterprise Ireland have been absolutely like I'm convinced we wouldn't be where we're at if we if we didn't get the help and support from Enterprise Ireland in that. During the pandemic, there was a sustainable enterprise fund launched by Enterprise Ireland, we were looking enough to benefit from some of that. During that process we had to engage in a strategic accounting or financial capability planning type of thing. And that helped us raise quite a chunk of SPCI so European backed finance low interest rates, which really gave us this funds to be strategic in our thinking and to go ahead with some of these international offices and to hire to scale and so on. Recently we did a interviewers own program then where I got to know Carol from every view as well. And, you know, we were, we got to travel to Germany and Milan and so on and we sing Linus Holland is our next next market there. And again, I would say, and journey and the involvement with her has just been brilliant you know and we've had follow up meetings that have been part sponsored and this, you know, organized and sponsored by Enterprise Ireland as well in Holland and so on and so we're well in our way to our next part of that expansion. And there's one other thing I would say just last kind of the anecdotal thing. Dan if you don't mind before is we so we are convinced now when we open in further European markets, our starting point is a small acquisition. We're going to buy a company with 510 guys good guys maybe struggling to scale that has some clients that has the local dialects network etc, just so we're not starting from ground zero, because to hire a sales guy to get enough to set up the legal entity sales guys etc etc. We're going to burn through a million, million and a half. Are we just easy to put that money into in our minds anyway that's part of our strategy. We take a lot of those boxes, you know, and then anecdotally on that we did that in the UK, we acquired a company, but it was a small branding company. And you'd say why is a tech company buying a branding company, because at the time we couldn't find the branding company, or sorry, a tech company, we knew this branding company very very well. There were honorable trustworthy guys doing excellent work for really nice clients large clients. What it did is it gave us offices in the heart of London, he gave us guys with a local dialect, you know, local accents because often what happens I think with Irish companies and I would have been guilty of this in the past we set up the virtual office in London phone redirector Ireland and Paddy Whackery, and we're kind of winging it from there and companies see through that and people see through that you know so having an office having people on the ground having turnover locally, having reference clients is not completely in our sweet spot again just got us there a bit faster. And I know from working with this company that we've done quite a lot of the e marketing assignment grants that are that are available from Enterprise Ireland to help and present clients in terms of their digital strategy internationally. I think that's what Merade was talking about there in terms of what are you know, looking at local websites localization SEO social media marketing all that type of stuff. So again it's a fantastic opportunity there for any Enterprise Ireland client that hasn't available to maybe take advantage of that as a first step in terms of international expansion. So I just paused there Dan sorry. Your final point kind of anticipated the question that would that have been burning on my mind in terms of how you get into a new market. So rather than, you know, incorporate in another country. You're saying that what you found is the best way is to actually just acquire a small existing company and bolt it on to your business rather than go through all of the difficulties of incorporating a new entity. Is that am I right is that what is it. I mean what what Daniel has achieved in Poland I think it's just been an element of not look you know me hard work obviously but Enterprise Ireland were we were looking up that Enterprise Ireland were there had a really good contact gave us exclusivity and we won our first contract and off we went. But what startup gets from zero to one million in their first year, you know what I mean so that for me is an anomaly, you know, and we had to adopt our own strategy quite considerably, even to help Daniel achieve that. And we had to become more rounded in our solution because selling an unknown brand of cloud in particular in a foreign markets was a challenge for sure you know so we had to loosen our offering there we brought in we acquired another Irish company actually that gave us a lot of Microsoft skills, Microsoft Azure skills and, you know, that that gave Daniel a lot more opportunities to get his foot in the door talking to companies in Poland. And once we have our foot in the door then it led on to the conversations around private cloud or strive cloud. So, you know, so I suppose. And that's very much as part of our strategy internationally can we acquire a small company. Because in theory now, we can offer public cloud and private cloud to you know we can talk to any company in terms of their IT stack and setup, you know, so as opposed prior to that it was literally just strive. But an acquisition makes sense in our mind. It just gets us there quicker turn over staff clients local culture, you know, I mean culture across countries is just crazy. It's so different. You know, I mean with Patrick here from France, you know, I can imagine you couldn't get any more difficult. You know what I mean Patrick I would say to do business in France you would need to have an absolute local representative there like. I mean, in Poland in Poland, the deal we won with the first deal we won with the prison service was challenged in the courts. We got like we have a part time contracts manager working with us there to literally every contract we do there's these lengthy documents and processes and procedures to go to that as an Irish company working remotely we just wouldn't have had a chance of succeeding which you know the first sign of legal threat we'd have tally hold out of Poland. So, guys understand the local business local culture, language, etc. Good. Well, there's definitely an Ireland Poland theme running through the speakers this morning, and appropriately that there's a question has come in from a minus Rooney to you Carol, what insights into Polish language as a native speaker, gave you the buying behavior and culture of Polish organizations and what sort of competitive advantage that give give you and has this shaped then how you prepare to deal with other countries and buying organizations. Thank you. I think I start with that Irish and Polish ever similar in regards to culture and probably that way we are getting so well together. In general, but in regards to business, I think there's one significant difference, especially at the beginning is just we usually start very formally. And I suggest to stick to that rule. Don't try to break ice yourself allow your business partner to move towards informal communication and become more informal. For sure. Additionally, try to get face to face. That's the best way to kind of break that ice and get more informal. And once you get that face to face, try to kind of meet up and try to go to the restaurant in the informal ground. Don't go to the place of work, try to get that informal and neutral ground to build the relationship. And at that point, I'd say you feel like home. The English will not be a problem. It will be a problem as well. And from my perspective, it is the big insight that I would give to anybody and even what Andrew was saying and kind of I know Andrew from from kind of from different angle when we kind of work in the same course actually through Enterprise Ireland. And we talk a lot about the market and his journey in Poland. I think that's one of the best thing you can say it's probably the same like with English and friends saying here kind of having someone presence or having. But also kind of trying to understand the culture. You probably kind of know that Polish are more conservative at the initial stage but when we get closer there's a great banter between us. And I think that's the big advice I would give in terms of kind of trying to approach Polish market in terms of the second part of the question, which I didn't get to repeat once again please. It was how have you applied that knowledge to other countries. Okay. I suppose kind of where I see it at the moment kind of we didn't have to yet kind of go through that sales process directly in other language we still kind of try to kind of get the status use in English. But where we kind of see a bit of challenge is in German market and that we kind of what we try to establish to find a perfect intro partner. I mean, enter Brazil but often call it as a consultant that help in the market and that's what we try to find what we try to find. And we found that kind of perfect person in the German market, which you can speak up about our product have huge credibility and I can just introduce that company and it kind of break the ice so when we come with English, it it becomes very easy again so it's just to break in that ice that's probably the biggest learning I learned to kind of crossing the languages. Thanks. Murray you mentioned a number of cases I think where you employed somebody here and Italian I think specifically you mentioned who wanted to go back to Italy. So over the past 25 years on it's become a much more cosmopolitan place people from all over the world live here. Is that a, is it easier to employ a person, let's say you're going to Spanish market that you look for Spanish people living here, employ them on board them here in Ireland, and then look at sending them or at least have them deal with the problem here or have them travel there on business or have them relocate there entirely is not a sort of area that's given Irish companies a competitive advantage that there's such a pool of labor from nearly every European country every country in the world now here already in the country. It's definitely yeah I mean it's definitely an opportunity for Irish companies. And we haven't employed it as a strategy if you know what I mean it's happened happened organically, and what that's not to say that it isn't a really good opportunity and even, you know, even things like the graduate programs and that taking on graduates within we've done that recently and they've been absolutely amazing. It's been an amazing help to the company, but you know in softwares at the moment we've got about 19 different nationalities. And so it's it's very very multicultural now, and we people working for us from all over the world, and we're very flexible company as well. You know we even, you know your, if you want to work a few weeks away in another country you can do that particularly with COVID times. So I would say in softwares would probably see more movement, and over the years but we, it's happened as I say organically we didn't plan to happen that way. And what I do think it will happen and I do think it's a great opportunity for Irish companies, and particularly if you want to train people in a certain way that fits with the vision and culture of your company. Good, good. And maybe, Andrew, I seem to, can you hear me? Yes, yes. I seem to have lost the screen. But a similar question to you and also the issue around, around cybersecurity and language. You know, is it all just out of coding or is there is there a particular challenge in your area with language. Yeah, I suppose because of our strategy it's not such an issue. You know I mean we are hiring local people on the ground in the markets that we're trying to deliver to. I mean where we, we maybe have some challenges around language or in our Moroccan office so we set up a, we struggled to get developers, software developers here in Ireland, or even in Poland for that, you know, so we looked at Morocco strategically because it's a Ryanair flight from Dublin, sometimes a week, you know, so it's three hours, it's the same time zone. So we thought in terms of working rhythm that would be good. Our friends at Enterprise Ireland told us it's an untapped resource, untapped market, and whatever you put the native language, I suppose on the downside then the native languages is Arabic and French. So I suppose they're finding guys with strong English can be a challenge but how we're getting around that then is we're having tutors come in and regularly into the office every week to work with the guys and just kind of asking them to speak English in the office and they're getting more integrated with our teams then around Europe and what it is. So, you know, they're actively getting stronger and English has been taught in the schools now while years ago it wasn't so it's a very much an open coming young dynamic kind of encoding is taught in school was funny enough. You know, so, yeah, I don't know if that answers the question then. Absolutely. Absolutely. But just a wider point I suppose in more and more countries, you know, English as you said in Morocco it used to be French is the second language, more and more people now speak English, you know, that what absolutely it's important to speak the local languages was we all need to sort of be aware of how extraordinary privileged we are to speak the global language of business and it's becoming ever more the global language of business but that's not a course to say that we don't need to focus on the languages of the markets we're getting into. Maybe a final one for you Patrick is sort of bigger picture one picking up a little bit on the earlier question that one has come in from Catherine Lynch. How can we better leverage the language language talents of our immigrant population in Ireland to help us grow our economic cultural presence internationally and I suppose Carol is living in a living embodiment of that. Somebody who came from Poland and now is his own business and has been very successful both in his home original home country and in other countries but any thoughts on that particular question Patrick as we close out. Yeah, well I would confirm what what you say then it's a huge opportunity to use advantage that that Ireland has now with with this monthly lingual young population coming into the country being trained in a very sophisticated environment so that that really creates a pool rich pool of talent that can be be used to develop new markets I would mention that there are more and more flexible ways of employing people in other markets. I won't go into the details it's probably the topic for another seminar, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you immediately need to have a contract in the local social and so on. So so there are flexible ways and they're actually Irish companies offering solutions in this space so that's, that's good. So I would say, yes, absolutely let's exploit this opportunity. Talk to Enterprise Ireland to see how we can help you do that and yeah it's a great asset for the country and for the businesses in Ireland. Great. Okay, well look that's with a lot of doom and gloom around everywhere and concerns about recession. It's been very nice to talk to people who are so upbeat about how their businesses are going and expansion plans and opportunities rather than the challenges that have that dominate so much these days. So, look, thank you all very much for your contributions I think we got a lot of detail there in terms of the sort of challenges and how to address them from you all. Quarter past nine, we said we would come to our own Director General David O'Sullivan to close out the both this event today and in fact the series this is the third and final event we've done in collaboration with Enterprise Ireland. I personally would like to thank all my own colleagues, Enterprise Ireland colleagues who we've worked with over almost a year on this, our speakers today and all the previous speakers who have joined us in the two previous events. So with that, let me hand over to David to to formally bring proceedings to a close David, you're muted there David. We can indeed. Yeah, sorry. Every time I move I came back to Brussels last night when the computer moves I have to reset the audio setting so I forgot to do that sorry. It's been a great, great discussion and I, I agree with you on one thing and I'm going to disagree with you on another and I agree that it was great to hear the optimism and I learned a lot actually from from all three speakers so thank you very much for that and it's a great, great note on which to close the series. I agree with you Danis I was going to just give you some thoughts on languages and I actually think having English as our main language is a curse. Because it makes us complacent. And we think that if you speak English, everyone speaks English. I heard a Swedish politicians once say he will address the meeting in the language of the future which was bad English. I think actually, yes it's great to speak English which is, you know, the lingua franca, but never learning a foreign language is is a huge impoverishment. And I say this, following on the discussion and I'll come back to that in a moment about the business, you know, doing business in the single market and obviously there are you know, 23 languages in the European Union. I used to know some officials when I first joined the commission who could actually speak all of the official languages back when we were nine right I think that is probably intellectually impossible today. But if you if you never learn a foreign language. And by the way, your first language first non English language can be Irish in our case I mean certainly for me that was the first language. I learned to speak fluently. And it was a huge revelation to me that you know you could actually work and express yourself and think through another language. And I've gone on to acquire one or two others since but so I actually think we in Ireland need to put much more emphasis on the absolute need for people to learn a second language, third language if after Irish. Because I think really if you if you don't make that effort and acquire that facility to understand that you think slightly differently when you think in another language, you will you will always struggle to understand multiculturalism and to understand the link between which is very close and so I think they're too late for many of us, of course to start learning new languages but I think as a country, we really need to invest in encouraging our young people to acquire additional languages because it will stand them in good Now, coming to the main business point here of course was the, the opportunities of the single market. And it's been really interesting to listen to the speakers from the different companies as to how they've addressed the challenge and it is a challenge of operating in what might be legally speaking in the market with no barriers to trade in good services and capital and even people, but which is effectively segmented by by the nature of cultural differences and language, and, and you have to come to grips with that. But what I really found optimistic and encouraging from all the speakers today was the fact that this, this doesn't have to be as big a problem as it might first seem. There are interesting suggestions as to how you can get around it. Getting a local partner. Patrick mentioned, you know, fact technology now helps enormously you know you can have actually machine translation, which, you know makes life a lot easier. You can use interpreters brought brought in on remotely and so forth. So there are a range of ways in which you can start thinking of breaking out into the into the single market but somewhat daunted by the by the prospect of dealing with the different languages. And there are there are many ways to deal with this and I also thought it was great to hear the from Andrew in particular the help that Enterprise Ireland can can provide for companies which are looking to see the opportunity how they would go about it. So I think the the the fact remains that language and culture language and cultural differences will will always be important. You need to be sensitive to them. On the other hand, I think if your business product makes sense and and gives value for money and addresses a need. I think you will always find a way to sell that and and that is again what came across I thought from from the examples we had today from from the different companies. So, with just those those few thoughts, I would like to close this this session, this series. We're very grateful to the excellent cooperation we've had with Enterprise Ireland and particularly and Lannigan and her team for being able to present this series which I hope has been useful to businesses to understand better how the opportunities offered by by the European market and some of the ways in which companies can be helped in in in trying to expand their their their business activities in in in in the EU. And with that, I would like to bring the session to a close.