Minister McGrath travels to World Economic Forum for series of political and business engagements
-
From: Department of Finance
- Published on: 17 January 2024
- Last updated on: 12 April 2025
The Minister for Finance has today (Tuesday) travelled from Brussels to Davos, Switzerland for the 2024 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The theme of this year’s meeting is Building Trust with four pillars, including International Security; Growth and Jobs; Emerging Technology; and Climate & Nature.
The WEF Annual Meeting is attended by a large and diverse group of political and business leaders, heads of international organisations, non-governmental organisations and international media. Attendance will provide an excellent opportunity for Minister McGrath to convey important messages to an international audience on Ireland’s perspective on key global issues.
Throughout his engagements, Minister McGrath will emphasise Ireland's distinctive strengths as a leading location for international business and investment, and our commitment to an economic development model based on open, free, competitive and rules-based international trading.
As part of his programme, Minister McGrath will participate in a high-level panel on the Future for the European Green Deal alongside the Executive Director at the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, and Executive Vice-President for European Green Deal in the European Commission, Maros Šefčovič.
In addition, he will have a wide range of political and business-related meetings with other Forum participants as well as a number of interviews with international media. Minister McGrath will also co-host the annual IDA Ireland event for senior executives of major international companies.
Speaking ahead his visit, the Minister said:
“I look forward to returning to Davos this week and engaging with a range of key international actors including senior executives and a number of my international counterparts. This Forum provides an excellent opportunity to promote our economic interests and discuss Ireland’s, and indeed the world’s, transformative trends in areas such as demography, decarbonisation, digitalisation and de-globalisation.
"I will be underlining the resilience of the Irish economy and how our membership in the European Union, our English-speaking workforce, and business-friendly environment, our public policy emphasis on education and research, makes Ireland an excellent place in which to invest and which in turn will help drive our job creation strategy."