The Irish Maritime Development Office (IMDO) has a statutory mandate to promote growth in the Irish Shipping and related services and to attract to Ireland additional marine related service sector operations along with key players in International Shipping and ancillary services. Its mandate includes promoting and assisting the development of Ireland as an internationally competitive location for shipping and shipping services; capitalising on Ireland's opportunity to capture a share of the large expansion envisaged for global shipping and its services sectors; the promotion of Ireland as an International centre for ship registration; and the development and implementation of a strategic framework for the shipping industry and its ancillary services sector.

Indeed, Ireland's many advantages put it in an ideal position to considerably increase maritime based activity in such areas as ship finance and banking, marine insurance, maritime law and legal services, ship management, ownership and operations, as well as shipbroking, chartering, sale and purchase. The IMDO has a remit to develop all of these areas, as well as assisting in preserving, expanding and developing the short sea links which are so crucial to our overall economic development.

Indeed, to this end, The IMDO is the designated Special Promotion Centre in Ireland for short sea shipping in line with EU policy and has been a member of the European Shortsea Network (ESN) since March 2001.The growing strength and effectiveness of the short sea network coincides with a renewed and prominent focus at European level on the role of short sea shipping and its strategic importance to the European Community members. But, as an island nation, we already knew about that.