The reports of the National Competitiveness Council are published. The most recent one, published on 5 May, dealt with issues such as skills, costs, the information society and telecommunications. Competitiveness is something we must constantly keep our eye on because it is never ending. The fact that a firm is competitive one day does not mean that in six months' time it will still be competitive. Clearly there are a number of key issues which include skills and availability of people. That is why the Government made £365 million available over the past two years to try to ramp up the number of people qualifying in key sectors of the economy where we were experiencing difficulties.
Another area is the whole issue of regulation. It is generally accepted that economies that are overregulated are anti-competitive, so we need effective regulation and it must be enforced, but we do not need over-regulation.
There are issues to do with taxation and the cost of labour. That impacts on budgetary policy. It has a key role to play in maintaining our competitiveness. The issue the Deputy has highlighted – infrastructure – is crucial to the capacity to make Ireland a hub for electronic commerce, and that in the main depends on developing the infrastructure and the regulatory and legal framework and having people with skills. Electronic commerce is a huge new growing area of business that we want to identify, and one that could help us maintain our competitiveness if we tap the potential it has for Ireland. At the moment the Americans have 80 per cent of the e-commerce market. It is estimated that it will be worth one trillion dollars annually by 2005. The Europeans have about 10 per cent of that market. We want Ireland to be the e-commerce hub of Europe, and the Government has put together a public-private partnership to develop that infrastructure and to bring in the players that can provide connectivity to the main centres in the world and, it is hoped, the main centres throughout the country to allow us to capture e-commerce projects.
In relation to competitiveness, we need to keep our eye constantly on the ball. There are some people who have suggested that, just as we gender-proof Government policies, we should competitiveness-proof them. That is something to which we should give consideration.