Cowen to host major economic forum

Taoiseach Brian Cowen is to call on leading international figures with Irish links to help generate ideas on an economic recovery in Ireland at a major economic forum planned for Dublin later this year.

Mr Cowen will personally invite participants to the international economic forum where they will be invited to work together to forge ideas for economic recovery. The Global Irish Economic Forum is being organised and hosted by the Department of Foreign Affairs along with a number of other Government Departments and State agencies. It will take place at Farmleigh over the weekend of September 18th-20th September.

Invitations will shortly be issued in the form of a personal letter from the Taoiseach and the majority of participants will be drawn from countries with a significant Irish community and from countries where Irish people have been successful in business.

The event will examine how Irish business people and those with Irish links or heritage can work together to generate ideas that will contribute to efforts at economic recovery.

“The Government and the global Irish community have in the past worked closely together on issues such as the peace process in Northern Ireland and the rewards of such co-operation have been considerable”, said Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin today.

“The Forum will provide us with the opportunity to take Ireland’s relationship with the global Irish community in a new direction, to examine innovative ways of working together and to generate ideas for Ireland’s economic recovery.

"Now is the time to shape a more strategic relationship which will bring benefits both to Ireland and to our global community and which has a more developed economic focus.”

Mr Martin said the initiative forms part of a wider strategy of deeper Government engagement with the diaspora and is intended to complement the Ireland-United States Strategic Review and the strategy for economic renewal outlined in “Building Ireland’s Smart Economy”.