I hesitate to quarrel with the Minister of State but the information given to me is that there is not a set of questions designed to give a detailed profile of the information technology industry, including the precise number of companies, the type of company, the number of employees and whether the ownership is national or non-national. I may have misunderstood the Minister of State's reply and I appreciate he is not directly responsible for its formulation. However, given the shake out in the IT sector internationally and nationally, it has been formally communicated to me that it is difficult to formulate policy because of the imprecise nature of the statistical information available.
Perhaps the briefing information available to the Minister of State can elaborate on his formal reply. I am informed that notwithstanding the fact that we have invested a lot of time, energy and political commitment we simply do not have the information that is requested in my former question. The reply is unsatisfactory, but if the Mini ster of State wishes to come back to me on another day I would be happy with that.