ASIA BUSINESS WEEK DUBLIN!Dublin Beijing Business Summit!

4 June 2014  

Keynote Presentation!Lord Mayor of Dublin, Oisín Quinn!

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Keynote Address by Oisin Quinn, Lord Mayor of Dublin, at the Dublin Beijing Business Summit 4 June 2014 , Asia Business Week Dublin Good morning everyone, Ambassador Xu Jianguo, you’re very welcome, Chairman Du Deyin of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress you’re very welcome, Chief Executive Owen Keegan, Speakers, distinguished guests, visiting delegations from Beijing, guests and speakers at this conference, the team from Asia Matters, the team from Dublin City Council. I’m delighted to have the chance to say a few words this morning about how Dublin is the ideal gateway to Europe for Chinese business, and to have the opportunity to share some of our thoughts on that. Firstly, I would like to echo everything what Chief Executive Owen Keegan has said in relation to the importance of the Beijing Twinning Development, and the sister city relationship, one we are absolutely determined to build on further, and therefore we are absolutely delighted to provide the visiting high level delegations from Beijing Municipal People’s Government the chance to participate in this important Asia Matters Conference. Secondly, I want to echo what the City Manager said about thanking Martin Murray and the various team members of Asia Matters, they have been valued partners over the last number of years, and continue putting together networking opportunities for business people in Dublin and from Asia and have made a very valuable contribution to this growing relationship between Ireland and various markets in Asia. Particularly this conference with Beijing, which is very timely indeed, there is a growing momentum towards the relationship between Ireland and China and, in particular, Dublin and Beijing and it important that the capital cities lean on this. As the City Manager said, there’s a growing trend toward urbanization, there’s a growing trend towards cities taking the lead, in terms of investment, and there’s a growing trend in terms of global Foreign Direct Investment, looking at cities, it’s very important that cities stand out, take the lead in terms of opening themselves and Dublin is certainly very keen to do that, and we certainly do have strengths- we have been particularly successful in recent years at attracting FDI from the United States. In fact, in relation to this, FDI in Ireland stands at over 220M USD, that figure is more than the US FDI in the

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BRICS- Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. And that is a particular strength Ireland has in terms of being the ideal location for investment. Firstly, we are the only English speaking capital city in the Eurozone- and English is increasingly the primary language of business in Europe and Northern Europe in particular- that gives you access to the EU’s half a billion citizens, one of the biggest markets and is absolutely vital for any successful business. And I have no doubt that as businesses growing in China look towards developing outwards, and particularly to the European market then maybe they should look more closely at Ireland and Dublin, as a destination of choice, we have a history of attracting revenue and attracting that kind of investment. Secondly, we have a low state corporate tax rate and a stable political system supportive of business. We have maintained, for many years now, a rate of 12.5% and part of the political stability that surrounds that is certainty when businesses are making the decision to invest in Ireland. This is one of the key factors in attracting business. In addition to our tax and political support, we have a great amount of talented Irish workers, a result of our strong academic sector. In Dublin we have a number of high level universities, very successful for a number of years and we now establishing in the city a new university campus, Grangegorman. So we have a total of four major universities- Trinity, UCD,DCU, and the new DIT campus. We have a very young workforce as well: 50% of our population is under 30, this is very accessible to businesses. We are also a very diverse city: under 20% of our population in our last census identified themselves as Dubliners who were born in Ireland, this is a big strength because any companies seeking to establish in Dublin will not be looking to solely trade with the Irish market, but will look to access to the European market and indeed the Middle East and Africa, in particular North Africa, so it is vital to be able to attract staff from around Europe and around the world to work in your business, and Dublin has that character. For example Google, has its global headquarters in Dublin, with over 3000 staff, of which less than 20% are Irish and that shows the importance of being able to attract people to live and work in your city. Particularly in the New Technologies, Software and Tech Centre, the young people you see working in that sector want the open, diverse, wealthy, vibrant city and, in fact, Dublin certainly offers that, that is key to success of enabling

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businesses to grow fast and attract staff to live in the city, and Dublin has developed a track record for that. In fact, Dublin City Council is very keen to keep encouraging this diversity and interculturalism within the city. As the city manager mentioned, we support the major New Year Chinese Festival every year, this year to celebrate the Year of the Horse, and it was Europe’s biggest Chinese New Year festival, with a great programme of events including a performance by Wuhan Conservatory, , so we are very keen to open up our richness and cultural diversity in the city. We have a long-standing, strong and substantial Chinese community in the city, who play a very important role. It’s very important to honour the culture of our city as open, welcoming and diverse, and Dublin City Council plays a key role in that. Another important aspect of the twinning relates to the initiative in 2012 between Beijing University of Technology and UCD, coming together to form the Beijing International College. I was in Beijing last year to meet the 200 students who are starting the new Information Technology Course and it was incredibly impressive to listen to them speak about their hopes and ambitions, but it was also exciting to see the potential that’s being offered by this coming together of Beijing University of Technology and UCD for this new international college, which apparently was backed by Beijing Municipal Government, and that’s very important in sending a message that Beijing Government wants to invest in our future, and it must be recognized that this was a very important factor of the campus opening in China and we very much appreciate that. I also had the opportunity to receive 30 or so Chinese students who are studying on their visit to Dublin- something that happens a lot: students traveling back and forth the two cities- but yesterday we discussed this with the Beijing Delegation, I think we see the opportunity of building on cooperation at an academic level, and to also assist the institutes as they decide to start new business and give them the opportunity to do so in both Dublin and Beijing, to foster the exchange of culture, and offer experiences from third level institutions, and that’s something that we agreed to work on yesterday, during our meeting with Chairman Du Deyin, and something that will come of the sister city twinning over the next number of years. I believe that the potential for cooperation between Dublin and Beijing is huge and is growing, and we hope that this will also lead to an increase in cultural visits and tourism. Dublin was one of the founding cities of the World Tourism Cities Federation, which was established by the Beijing Municipal People’s Government two years ago, and were happy to be at the second annual convention of the TCF in Beijing last September, and to listen to the Mayor of

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Beijing. Dublin is playing its part in the role of tourism links and the twinning of the two cities. We also know that growing business links, growing tourism links, growing student links will add to the momentum to establish a direct flight between Beijing and Dublin. I know that Dublin Airport Authority are working together closely with Beijing Airport and Air China, and the direct flight was a topic that was discussed and raised, and I was interested to hear yesterday during my meeting with Du Deyin that Beijing have plans to upgrade Beijing Airport to accommodate 60M passengers. A direct flight would add to the ease of doing business, with regards air travel, between our two cities and that’s something we have to work on. In terms of visas, the government is working on making it easier for Chinese students, business people and tourists to travel to Ireland, and equally to visit companies based on mainland Europe, an area that certainly needs more work and we are committed to, and we understand the importance of making it easy for visitors to come to Dublin and to do business here. There are a lot of issues of be worked on, a lot of ideas and a lot of progress to be made. The momentum that has been there since the sister city twinning in 2011 is fantastic. We’ve seen a lot of progress between the universities, at a business level and the student level. I’m very confident that Ireland can be an absolute key partner of China, and a key partner of Chinese businesses in the future, and can be the ideal gateway for Beijing and China into Europe, and you can be sure that we will work with you to ensure this happens.