The bad news is that Irish companies are relatively unknown outside the EU and face an uphill battle.

The Celtic Tiger story is both inspirational and non-threatening in recent EU joiners such as Poland, where AIB quietly built a phenomenal success by investing in the privatised banking market there as early as 1994. AIB's Polish subsidiary is now second in the Polish market for mutual funds and brokering and third in factoring, and in 2006 its Polish revenues broke 1bn for the first time, up from 122m in 2001. Poles found it easy to accept Irish business partners, even when AIB reduced the size of the workforce in the companies it bought from 12,300 to 7,800. "We were seen as non-threatening, " said AIB's Liam Horgan.

But go to India or China and the story is different. The further away from Ireland your company roams the less kudos your company will receive just for being Irish.

Until our performance in the cricket World Cup a lot of business leaders in India and Pakistan thought we were still part of the UK, if they thought about us at all, Gerry Murphy of Enterprise Ireland told an audience of Irish business owners and international financiers in Dublin last week.

Murphy, executive director of the international sales and marketing division of the business supporting semi-state, was speaking at an emerging markets conference hosted by the International Finance Corporation, the private-sector arm of the World Bank.

Awareness of Ireland drops dramatically beyond Europe and the Middle East, he said.

Murphy's caution is well-founded.

A survey of global business leaders on issues of trust conducted by Edelman Public Relations and released in February found that trust in Irish companies drops off dramatically the greater the distance from Ireland. Just 44% of those surveyed in India, for example, would trust an Irish company.

"It's likely a lack of awareness, not because Ireland has a negative image, " said Edelman Dublin chief Mark Cahalane when the report was released.

Fortunately Murphy had a suggestion. "Someone should hire the captain of the Irish cricket team" to captain a trade mission for Irish companies in India, Murphy said. As it happens, the Sunday Tribune has learned that Irish cricket captain Trent Johnston is available for just such an assignment. He recently retained renowned sports agent Fintan Drury to represent him. The Australian-born Johnston has never been to India or Pakistan but is eager to go. "Certainly I'd be interested. I was supposed to go for a cricket tour 10 or 12 years ago, I know a lot of the guys from the Pakistan side. It would be very exciting, " he said.

But a more reliable method of breaking into emerging markets is to partner up with an international firm that is already doing business in a market that may be difficult to understand.

India is famous for the red tape of its bureaucracy, a situation that is improving, according to Ashish Bajpal of Dublin-headquartered Depfa bank and based in Mumbai. Overcoming the hassles can be worth it, said Bajpal, particularly for companies in the infrastructure-building sectors. India is furiously building 3,000 miles of motorway, power generation and transmission networks and mobile phone networks. It also recently opened up for more foreign investment, with Vodafone's recent purchase of Hutchison Essar winning approval from regulators.

Murphy of Enterprise Ireland added that Ireland's experience with building an infrastructure, both physically and in the business culture, that can support multinational companies was itself a key skill that Irish firms can bring to the table overseas.

Edward Nassim of the International Finance Corporation said that the World Bank arm wanted to partner with more Irish firms, particularly ones looking to do business in Russia and the Ukraine, where the IFC is currently funding projects worth $2bn.