MESSAGE FROM H.E. RICHARD A. O’BRIEN AMBASSADOR OF IRELAND TO THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE

I am delighted to join President Colin MacDonald in welcoming you to the website of the Irish Business Association of Singapore! I have been especially priveleged over the past three years to have had numerous opportunities of working closely with an exceptional group of dedicated and talented people who are at the very heart of the Ireland-Singapore relationship.

Over that period I have seen the leadership and membership of Irish Business Association of Singapore (IBA) deepen and expand their monthly meetings into a vibrant and highly approachable dynamic network which embraces the entire range of Singapore’s leading business executives and impressive companies that have strong relationships and genuine goodwill towards Ireland. Indeed, today the IBA provides its members with important access to a powerful network of relevant people and companies in both Singapore and Ireland and in doing so assists all of us in maximising our effectiveness in our professional goals and challenges across the exciting business environment of a unique island nation that is at the centre of all that is commercially progressive across the countries of South East Asia.

In essence the IBA offers a network of dynamic, vibrant and resourceful individuals who leverage each other for opportunities, connections, ideas, information, interests and community. All of this becomes especially evident at the Association’s regular Business Breakfasts and First Friday Lunches as well as at the special events which its members organise with such genuine imagination including the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and this year’s Around the World Volvo Ocean Race Business Seminar. The IBA has thus become an essential forum and an exceptional platform for both highlighting and strengthening the character and quality of the Ireland–Singapore business relationship.

The energy and enthusiasm of the IBA – reflected in the diversity of the events which it offers, the quality of the networks it has so successfully forged and the level of activity it has undertaken – are enormously impressive and I know that this energy and enthusiasm will continue and indeed intensify in the course of the years ahead.