Creating productive associations between Irish people in banking in the City of London and Irish companies supplying the financial services sector will provide a network of "invaluable information", according to An Bord Trachtala, in London.

"We work hard at business networks," An Bord Trachtala's director in Britain, Mr Pat Maher, said last night ahead of a dinner in London to introduce 20 Irish software companies to Irish people working in the finance sector in London. Kindle, Sybex, McKeowns and Vision, all took part in the "Irish in Banking" event. With £5.6 billion spent on the financial services sector in 1997, representing 28 per cent of the total revenue spent on information technology in Britain, the main topic of conversation was the requirements of the London Irish bankers.

Ireland has become the second largest exporter of software in the world, after the US. Mr Maher pointed out yesterday that, when An Bord Trachtala compiled a database of Irish business people in Britain, it discovered a "high proportion" of successful executives were working for financial institutions there.

Mr Maher said he believed the "Irish in Business" network, set up by An Bord Trachtala 18 months ago, had "produced major benefits for the Irish economy". Small companies had been able to introduce their work to Irish banking and financial executives in London as a result of the new "business network". The construction industry in Britain may have lured Irish people to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s to work on building sites and the London Underground, but banking was "more likely" to be the chosen career of the Irish emigrant of the 1980s and 1990s.