Ireland beckoning Chinese investment to aid recovery

He added that Chinese spending in the EU did increase after the debt crisis hit the bloc, but is centered in Germany, which has seen the best performance during the crisis and has a high complementarity with Chinese industries.

Compared with the flat investment growth, Sino-Irish trade has regained momentum since the start of the 2008 financial crisis. China is Ireland's biggest trade partner in Asia and bilateral trade reached $5.89 billion last year, compared with $5.20 billion in 2009, according to China's General Administration of Customs.

But recent data from Eurostat - the bloc's statistics office - showed that two-way trade declined 8.5 percent year-on-year in the January-March period.

"The decline is related to the weak consumption in Ireland. In relation to China, I think the picture is very positive at the present time and for the future," said Declan Kelleher, Ireland's ambassador to China. "Irish trade with China is widening and deepening. We have new patterns of trade developing in the area of food and agri-business with very substantial increase in trade."