On 19 November, leave was given to the Dáil to introduce certain Supplementary Estimates for the service of the year ending on the 31st day of December 2025, including Vote 32 - Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (Supplementary).

The first part of our business, No. 1.1, is a referral to the committee. This Supplementary Estimate stands referred to this committee in accordance with Dáil Standing Order 222(2). In accordance with Dáil Standing Order 217, every Estimate for the public service shall be considered in committee. Today, the select committee is required to consider the Supplementary Estimate for 2025 for the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.

No. 1.2 is debate on the Supplementary Estimate. Under Dáil Standing Order 224:

In the discussion of a supplementary Estimate the debate shall be confined to the Items constituting the same, and no discussion may be raised on the original Estimate, save in so far as it may be necessary to explain or illustrate the particular Items under discussion.

I welcome the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Deputy Peter Burke, and his officials from the Department to today's meeting. The committee appreciates the comprehensive briefing materials provided by the Department in relation to today's discussion, which have been circulated to the members of the committee. In relation to No. 1.4, I propose that we publish the opening statement and briefing provided by the Minister on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. 1.5 is the opening statement. I invite the Minister to make his opening statement to the committee. He will have eight to ten minutes.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to present our Department’s Supplementary Estimate to the members of this select committee this afternoon. As the Cathaoirleach quite rightly outlined, the committee’s secretariat has been provided with a briefing, which I hope will be of assistance. With the permission of the Cathaoirleach, I will provide a little detail in relation to the constituent elements of the Supplementary Estimate.

The Estimate being presented to the committee this afternoon is not seeking any additional Exchequer funding above our original €1.306 billion gross provision, which was allocated in the 2025 Revised Estimates and approved by Dáil Éireann. Rather, the Estimate is of a technical nature and seeks to redistribute €34.233 million in savings to fund a number of capital and current expenditure priorities across the various programmes in my Department’s Vote this year. This equates to about 2.5% of our budget.

In terms of our jobs and enterprise development programme, the Supplementary Estimate proposes to provide increased funding of €16.733 million to a number of areas. Additional current funding of €3.119 million is being provided to the National Standards Authority of Ireland, NSAI, to meet operational costs in the areas of pay and pensions. The NSAI is funded from the Exchequer allocations it receives under subhead A6 of our Vote and also from the income it generates from services it provides to clients. The NSAI was allocated a total of €13.217 million in funding in the 2025 Revised Estimates, of which €12.717 million was by way of current funding to meet operational costs and €500,000 was capital funding. The NSAI expected to generate in the region of €41 million from fees in relation to the certification and related services it provided to clients. As it transpires, the fees generated in respect of a number of services have been less than originally estimated, which has resulted in the NSAI requiring additional funding of €3.119 million to meet its pay and pension obligations this year. Of the additional funding being sought in the Supplementary Estimate, €2.5 million is required to meet the authority’s pay costs this year. The authority currently has a staffing complement of 228. The other €619,000 is required to meet additional pension costs arising from the higher than expected number of staff retirements in 2025.

The allocation to the temporary partial guarantee scheme is being increased by €1 million. As the committee will be aware, the credit guarantee scheme is an access to finance measure designed to facilitate lending to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises and small mid-caps by providing lenders with a State guarantee on loans to eligible businesses. There have been three different iterations of the temporary credit guarantee scheme since its inception: the credit guarantee scheme, which operated from 2012 until 2020; the Covid credit guarantee scheme; which operated from September 2020 until June 2022; and the Ukraine credit guarantee scheme, which was operated up until the end of 2024. A total of over €1 billion in loans has been provided to eligible businesses under the three schemes, which has been key to their ability to survive the series of recent crises and to maintaining jobs in those businesses. The credit guarantee schemes have been developed and operated on a contingent liability basis and it is therefore not possible to definitively estimate what the number of claims may be in any year. As it transpires, while the annual number of claims on defaulted loans overall continues to run at a low level of between 2% and 3%, the number of claims in 2025 has been slightly higher than expected. The additional €1 million being sought in the Supplementary Estimate is required to meet this increase in the cost of claims.

The Supplementary Estimate will also increase the nominal allocation to the humanitarian relief fund from €1,000 to €115,000. The scheme is an emergency scheme to assist eligible businesses and community, voluntary and sporting bodies affected by flooding events by providing a contribution towards the cost of returning their premises to their pre-flood condition. The additional €114,000 being provided in the Supplementary Estimate essentially relates to flooding events that occurred in 2024. In this regard, there were two ad hoc flooding schemes established in 2024 to deal with flooding events late last year. The first scheme was opened due to flooding caused by a severe weather event in County Cork from 4 to 6 October 2024. The second was opened due to flooding caused by Storm Bert across 22 to 25 November 2024. While some of the costs of the Cork and Storm Bert schemes were invoiced and paid in 2024, a total of €114,000 of the costs, mainly in respect of claims for significant damages that required further in-depth assessments, was not paid until this year. Accordingly, the funding being provided through the Supplementary Estimate is required to meet these costs.

The Supplementary Estimate will provide a capital injection of €12.5 million to Microfinance Ireland, MFI, to enable it to continue lending through the microfinance loan fund. The Department provides periodic capital injections to Microfinance Ireland. These capital injections are used by MFI to lend to eligible business on a revolving basis, whereby loan repayments received from borrowers are reinvested to support ongoing lending activity. This approach ensures the sustainability of the microenterprise loan fund. In response to rising costs and the evolving needs of SMEs, I increased the permitted lending threshold under the microfinance loan scheme from €25,000 to €50,000 in September last year. Since this change, demand under the scheme has increased significantly. Loan applications increased by 65% and approvals rose by 55% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. The average loan size grew from €16,500 to €24,600, reflecting a strong uptake of the enhanced facility. The last capital funding injection by the Department to MFI was in 2021. The further €12.5 million injection requested in the Supplementary Estimate is required to ensure that MFI can continue to meet this enhanced level of demand.

The Supplementary Estimate will also increase funding to our enterprise innovation and commercialisation programme by €17.5 million. This funding will be allocated to subhead B5 of the Department’s Vote, which funds membership of international organisations, principally the European Space Agency. Ireland’s participation in the European Space Agency is designed to promote and build a base of technologically sophisticated enterprises that develop and trial technology solutions via space applications and then go on to develop new markets in a wide range of application areas based on the expertise they have built up. Ireland has experienced strong growth in the number of companies engaging with the ESA in recent years. The number of Irish-based companies engaged with the European Space Agency has grown from 70 in 2019 to 120 by the end of the first half of 2025. The €17.5 million being provided through the Supplementary Estimate will be invested across a range of ESA optional programmes that align with the national space strategy and that will generate commercially sustainable business opportunities.

As advised, this Supplementary Estimate is technical in its nature as it involves the redistribution of €34.233 million in savings from my Department’s 2023 voted gross allocation of €1.306 billion. Some €15 million of these savings will come from Enterprise Ireland’s capital allocation under subhead A7 of the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Vote. Enterprise Ireland generates income from investments, mainly through its equity and seed and venture capital programmes. The quantum of income generated from these investments in 2025 was greater than expected and resulted in a reduction in Enterprise Ireland's funding requirement from the Exchequer. In addition, applications under a number of Enterprise Ireland support schemes experienced delays and, in certain instances, were deferred, which also contributed to the level of savings on its Exchequer allocation.

The tourism product development programme supports investment by Fáilte Ireland in developing experiences and attractions that assist in attracting international visitors to Ireland and encouraging domestic tourists to explore different areas of the country. A breadth of projects are currently being undertaken right across the country, including the development of a water sports facility in Wexford, the reopening of the Little Museum of Dublin and the upgrading of the Carrowmore visitor centre in Sligo. The capital investment in the various attractions and experiences funded under this programme is multi-annual in nature. Expenditure in 2025 has been somewhat slower than anticipated, resulting in €10.65 million of the allocation not being spent this year. However, Fáilte Ireland remains committed to delivering on this suite of planned attraction development next year, over a slightly longer horizon.

Savings of €4.315 million will also be achieved under subhead A20, which relates to the power up and increased cost of business, ICOB, schemes.

The Revised Estimates for 2025 allocated a total of €17.315 million to fund reclassification of appeals process in respect of the power up and ICOB schemes. These schemes, which were launched in 2024, were essentially designed to assist eligible businesses in dealing with rising costs. The allocation of €17.315 million was based on the best estimate of the likely cost of the reclassification scheme. There were no definitive statistics available on the numbers of businesses who initially misclassified their business sector. As it transpired, only €13 million was required to meet the cost of successful applicants under the reclassification appeal for a variety of reasons.

It is worthwhile to note that the funding of almost €420 million was provided over 2024 and 2025 under both schemes, which undoubtedly was of significant benefit to businesses. The remaining €4.268 million in savings will be generated across a number of programmes, namely, €619,000 under subhead A3 in agency legacy pensions where pension liabilities have been less than expected, €1.148 million under subhead B8, disruptive technologies innovation fund, where drawdown in respect of a number of projects has been delayed, €1.164 million under subhead C3, workplace relation programme, due mainly to difficulties in recruiting staff and €1.336 million under subhead C7, mainly due to difficulties in recruiting specialist staff in the current tight labour market.

I thank the Minister very much. We now open the meeting to the floor for members. Deputy Conway-Walsh has business to attend to in the Dáil, so we will let her go first.

I do. That has nothing to do with the shortness of my contribution. As the Minister said, it is a redistribution. It seems imminently sensible to have that flexibility to be able to redistribute those funds and have continuous evaluation of them and evaluation of why people do not take up schemes either. I have nothing further to add.

Before we proceed, is the Minister comfortable with replying to members individually? That is the normal routine in the committee.

Yes, certainly.

Each Cathaoirleach has their own style, but I think it is better to do this.

That is no problem.

I ask the Minister to reply to Deputy Conway-Walsh. We will come back to Deputy McCormack.

I am fine. I did not raise any questions on it.

It is a redistribution of money. The Minister has explained in huge detail where that money is going. I have no problem supporting the reallocation.

It is less than 2.5% of the total budget. The majority schemes have worked out as prescribed. With Microfinance Ireland and areas like that, they are important for SME lending. It will have a good contribution to the economy. We have a lot of good work to do next year as well.

I have a query. In relation to a surplus coming back from Tourism Ireland, I warmly welcome the Minister's proposal this week down in Westmeath. I was there myself. It is wonderful. It reinvigorates how much tourism means to Ireland. We are looking at €6.2 billion of international spend and people often leave out the figure of €3.1 billion of domestic spend. The Minister has ambitious figures going forward. We are looking at a 50% increase, but I am still seeing Tourism Ireland - I will not say handing back money - but there is a surplus there. Will the Minister explain that?

First, it is in relation to Fáilte Ireland, not Tourism Ireland. Tourism Ireland is doing exceptional work. There is a challenge with Fáilte Ireland at the moment. It currently has a new chief executive who has taken over, Caroline Bocquel, who will be exceptional for the sector. It is not ideal at a time when tourism is under pressure that there is a State agency that has not fulfilled its obligation with schemes and brought forward enough projects to ensure it is developing and promoting our domestic brand. I assure the Deputy it will not happen again. I took over midway through the year. The legislation was put through in about June where the Department got control over the tourism brief. We have brought in new key performance indicators. We have brought in targets for the sector over the next five years on how we are going to grow revenue, visitor numbers and develop significant career pathways in our tourism sector, which will be critical. We are going to be looking at the less mature markets we have in our country. We will hopefully get a minimum of 7% growth per annum and ensure that this will not happen again. It is something that I am not happy with. I am quite frankly very annoyed by it, but it is something we will rectify. On the management of Fáilte Ireland, we need more structure. We need more strategic direction. It is going to be managed differently now it is under my Department than it was heretofore. I assure the Deputy of that.

With Fáilte Ireland, there is such a transition and restructuring going there at the moment, which can only be a positive. The figures are showing that we are down 7%. October was strong but our figures are still down. The Minister announced this week that we are looking for 50% of an increase. The Minister is taking on-----

I will put some context behind that. In the past three months, we have gone to an increase. It was a 6% increase in October. That shows a significant turnaround. We had approximately 10% less flights coming into our economy over the past year. For example, for this winter we will have around 12% more flights coming in, 17% more from North America, 13% more from Germany, 8% more from France and 9% more from the UK. That will provide an additional opportunity for us to grow the sector. We are aligning a new strategic aviation scheme where new routes open up. This year, we have opened up Denver, Nashville and Detroit, bringing us to 21 gateways in North America. We need to have our Tourism Ireland staff in particular aligned on the ground, which was not the case heretofore, to grasp that opportunity and ensure they are getting the networks with the travel operators to bring people here to our country.

Second, we are lengthening our season. We are going to do a lot of work by bringing it from St. Brigid's Day right out the whole way to the home of Hallowe'en period and beyond. We can really structure that so the 50% of tourists who come from May to September; we want to elongate that. We have about 11,500 hotel rooms now under construction that will be delivered next year. A total of 8,500 of those are in Dublin. We can do a lot more in that space. We have about 36,000 currently in the planning process. In more regional areas, we need to do more work as a Government to try to bring forward an accommodation strategy next year in areas where we need additional accommodation. This is something Deputy Brennan also is very much committed to. We have reduced our capacity on State contracts from 13% down to under 5% now. One key thing I want to do is to bring forward a culinary strategy next year, which will look at our food and beverage offering. There is the distillery trail that Fáilte Ireland launched last Friday with 26 distilleries and visitor experiences around the country, which will add to that. It is on foot of all those initiatives and the growth we are going to have now that in every single trade mission, tourism will have its voice along with Enterprise Ireland and IDA, which was not the case heretofore. That will change how we market the product. It will change the value proposition that we are offering in terms of accommodation and our food offering, which will be significant. Critically, which I am pushing Fáilte Ireland on now, is that we will go down and work hand in glove with our SMEs, that is, the 46,000 businesses that are offering our product.

If we look at the statistics again, 80% of visitors who come into our country are using online portals to book and research activities. A total of 30% are using generative AI to plan out their itinerary. That is why we need to work with businesses and State agencies to develop their online digital capacity. I will be pushing that we have a 90% target by 2030 in terms of digital process innovation with our SMEs and we are working so hard with them to do that. The opportunity is there. We will more flights and more numbers coming in. I want to drive the domestic activity as well through some of those mature markets that Deputies Brennan, McCormack and Conway-Walsh will be aware of in the west and midlands that we need to push hard. We invest a lot in the Hidden Heartlands and other brands like that but we need to grow them now and get the capital expenditure in. We will be working closely with Fáilte Ireland under a new chief executive with great energy and a refreshed board to deliver in this sector.

I welcome those comments. As somebody who has been in the industry for 25 years, my concern is that we very much have put our eggs in the one basket. I welcome the new routes to America. I know how important it is. Under the current geopolitical situation, was that not a dangerous policy? If we discuss numbers, fewer than 400 million people live in America.

There are 1.4 billion people living in India. There are 1.46 billion people living in China. I spoke with the Canadian ambassador. There are 41 million people living in Canada but the key number he gave me was that 5.7 million of them are of Irish descent. That must be a huge market. Our focus previously was very much on America. Let us not rule out that market in any way but let us broaden our horizon. From the conversation this morning, I feel that is the way we are going.

It absolutely is. As the new Minister, my priorities are very different from those of my predecessors. We are in Asia now. We are in the UAE. There are more flights coming from China. We are working on expanding the European market, where we have been under significant pressure. I am always data driven in policy decisions; we must have evidence for them. One of the key concerns in European markets was about food but when people come here, more than 80% of them are really excited by the food offering we have. That tells me we have to get that message out there to grow that base.

North America will continue to be a strong market. We have just come back from there. We have two super Irish-based tourism companies that have gone into the Canadian market and are bringing visitors over here. There is a lot of opportunity there still and we are working to grow market share. When I went out to Japan, I saw Tourism Ireland did not have a stand at Expo 2025. All of that is changing. I assure the Deputy of that. We are putting boots on the ground in these new markets, from which we stepped back over the past number of years. There is a very different stewardship. I can assure the Deputy of that.

I welcome the Minister's ambitious targets. I am here to help in any way I can.

I thank the Deputy.

I have a few brief questions. I thank the Minister for being here. I commend him on his engagement with the committee. I know some of the departmental officials were here in Leinster House for the briefing of the committee. I found that very beneficial for us to understand the Department and its work. We are also looking forward to going over to the Department in January. I believe the clerk has been in communication with the Department on that matter. That helpful engagement is welcome. Something to put on the Minister's agenda is that the committee may get an opportunity to engage with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland at some point in quarter 1 2026. If the Minister is having conversations with the chief executives, I ask that he mention we might be in for a visit.

Following on from the interesting points Deputy Brennan made, the statement refers to the job and enterprise development programme receiving €16.7 million. Members of the committee was in Japan, as I am sure the Minister is aware. We were are at Expo 2025 and the new Ireland House to see the investment that has been put in. It is being led by H.E. Damien Cole, our ambassador who will shortly go to Singapore. He is doing wonderful work. I commend him on that. It struck me when I came back that Japan is Ireland's largest source of foreign direct investment in Asia but there is no direct flight between Ireland and Japan.

We are speaking about how we might decrease the risk arising from the fact Ireland gets 90% of its corporation tax take from US multinational companies. Obviously, that is hugely welcome and it is a sign of the successful work the Department and the State have undertaken to attract those companies into the country. There is an obvious risk, however. We are moving away from a unipolar world where the United States has been the dominant power in international politics since the fall of the Soviet Union more than 30 years ago into a world that is multipolar and will be much more challenging geopolitically for the country. That obviously has economic ramifications. It strikes me that if you go to Dublin Airport and look at the departure boards, there is only one flight between the continent of Asia and Ireland. That is a flight from Dublin to Beijing and there is nothing else. I think there was a link in Singapore at one point but it stopped when the pandemic occurred. That issue needs focus.

When people are brought closer together, it is much easier to do business and trade and for people to come here and learn about Ireland. What struck me in particular when in Ireland House was that we in Ireland lose track about how little people know about our country when we go to that part of the world. I have a concern about the positioning of the country and where we will be in the world economy in 20 years' time. To take one of the big events this year, 45% of the world's GDP was in the room at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation event. That could arguably be 55% or 60% of the world's GDP in 15 or 20 years. There are much more difficult countries to do business with and markets to break into, given their structure of government.

Ireland's positioning in respect of that is something I am concerned about. I would love to get the Minister's feedback on that. There is a lot of merit in the committee working on this matter and giving focus to the fact that the Minister has allocated budget for new market development, etc.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. He is absolutely right. One of the key things that will be published today is our action plan. It contains 70 actions to deliver infrastructure. As we go forward, it will be critical that projects that are so important to the strategic direction of our countries are resolved. The Dublin Airport passenger cap is one of those. I visited many different cities and met airlines. I remember being in Atlanta where Delta told me it would love to bring new routes into Ireland but it could not do so at the time because of the cap. When that gets resolved, and we need to resolve it urgently, it will create huge opportunities.

The Cathaoirleach is right about Tokyo. We would love to see a connecting flight. I have engaged on that to try to make it happen. Obviously, we have to prove there is demand but, with the links we have there, that should be achievable.

As regards our action plan for market diversification, we have 41 trade agreements through the EU that cover 72 countries. That gives us huge scope to diversify our markets. We do not have to open up the paper or listen to the radio to learn about how countries talk to one another because it has very much changed. Trade has almost moved away from a multilateral rules-based approach, which Ireland is such a proponent of. We really have to work so hard to try to work in new markets. That is why we did a huge amount in Canada last week. We see huge opportunity there for new jobs to come into our economy. We will be looking at the Asia-Pacific region. Last night, I addressed the Asia Matters business awards, which were attended by a large number of CEOs and people from China, Japan, Indonesia, India and across that whole region. These countries are bringing so much into our country. There is huge opportunity there.

We are also looking at our indigenous sector. One thing that always strikes me is that the top ten Irish companies employ 450,000 people globally. That demonstrates the strong internationalisation of the Irish economy. The IDA is responsible for approximately 300,000 jobs in our economy, of which 200,000 are from US multinationals. We have a lot of work to do to diversify and de-risk the economy, notwithstanding that the US will continue to be a very important marketplace. We will work very closely with the US to grow and cement that. We can see that with artificial intelligence, in particular. We have brought through more than €1 billion in research and development investment this year alone, through companies investing in new ways of working, particularly in academia where so much of the commercialisation of research is onboarded in company supply chains.

Last night, at the Asia Matters awards, I met the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training, NIBRT, which is based in UCD. It works with many of the life sciences companies and is putting through approximately 5,000 trainees a year. Whether it is from Canada, North America, Asia, Europe or anywhere else around the globe, we have a very significant ecosystem. We have strong academia and tertiary partners that work with industry to develop their projects. It is a unique thing to have the skill set to underwrite that.

We can do a lot more on what the Cathaoirleach mentioned, including establishing new flights and new routes when we resolve this imposition. As a Government, we need to have a strong, strategic aviation policy. We will focus on growing our market share through our action plan on market diversification.

That is interesting and I appreciate it. We might have a second round to allow me to expand on it.

Another thing I noticed is that some of the money allocated is coming from a €15 million saving in Enterprise Ireland. To me, that presents a worry. One of the topics the committee is hoping to cover in quarter 1 of next year is how we can support young Irish entrepreneurs in their work. Specifically, when it comes to the modern, fast-paced economy, developments with artificial intelligence, where Ireland's place is in that and the disruption it could cause, we are uniquely positioned in a European context. Everybody in the room knows that already in relation to multinationals that have come here.

We should harvest the domestic talent we have created through our higher education. The economic capacity that has been created by having companies here already shows how Ireland could potentially have its own unicorn strategy, similar to what the French have done very successfully with Station F. I know it is not a silver bullet just to go in and allocate capital but when I look at incubators and companies like Dogpatch Labs, while I know there were issues with the National Digital Research Centre, NDRC, there are success stories there. There is a feeling among young Irish entrepreneurs that they need to exit Ireland early on, when they come to foundation stages of their companies, because they do not feel they are getting the full support of the State.

I think this represents an enormous opportunity. I presented a document to our parliamentary party on revitalising the International Financial Services Centre and investing capital there to make it into a world-class incubator. It is a 15-minute journey to an international airport that handles over 35 million passengers and with the passenger cap gone, that will grow again, as well as being within a two-and-a-half-hour travel distance of every major city in the State. We are missing a trick in relation to that. I would like to see the Department looking at that, particularly when I see that €15 million is being knocked off from Enterprise Ireland. Is there not a better way of using that money than investing in space programmes, etc? I am not taking anything away from that. I know it is probably needed and maybe I am being a bit unfair but I think it is a good question to ask.

To clarify about Enterprise Ireland, it is not money that is being taken away from Enterprise Ireland. It is actually that Enterprise Ireland generated more money than expected from its investments, so it is a success story. Each year Enterprise Ireland gives back money to the State. This is called own resource income and it is essentially money that it invests in companies. When it decides to realise that investment or move or leave its shareholding in it, money comes back into the Exchequer, and that has been greater than originally planned. We have €15 million additional capacity to reallocate around the Department. That is what we are looking for permission with. Notwithstanding that, we have to ensure that Enterprise Ireland spends its allocation on the other side, which is critical. Directly on the Cathaoirleach's point, we are now launching our consultation programme for our new start up Ireland scheme. This will be the State's offering for those early stage incubation ideas that are critical to the success of Ireland being a world leader in start-up enterprises, which we really need to get to the forefront of again. I invite the Cathaoirleach and his colleagues to work with us on that.

My only issue with Station F is that it is a decade old. We have to really look at what are the new innovative ideas, because society is changing so rapidly. Artificial intelligence is changing so much. General purpose technology has revolutionised every single sector. Just like when electrification came here, it goes right through the economy and we need to be able to grasp the opportunity in that. Together, we all need to think about what system we need to reflect our enterprise base and that is going to grow our start ups. It will need to work with the huge base we have with Dogpatch Labs, which does exceptional work, PorterShed and Republic and all those early start up supports to bring them together and working with them to enhance and grow the sector more . Start up Ireland and our new national accelerator programme will be key elements in doing this. We have an exceptional target to have 1,200 new start-up companies going to success and scale over the next five years, through Enterprise Ireland. This will bring us to about 275,000 jobs supported by the agency over the next five years. We want all hands on deck working with members here in the committee and working with the sectors to deliver upon that. Since I came into the Department I have been focusing very heavily on tourism but also on the enterprise sector and our small family businesses. I am also focusing on the new ideas coming through that we need to work, develop and get those companies to scale. It is great to have Jenny Melia as the new chief executive of Enterprise Ireland as she is very committed to that start-up space.

Absolutely and I do not want to be unfair. I had the pleasure of being down in your constituency at the Scale Ireland conference, a great organisation led by Martina Fitzgerald.

Absolutely, yes.

They are doing great work and it was good to see the hunger in the room for what we have just discussed. To be fair to the Minister, he has been responsive on that. I do not want to hog the clock and my time has gone over so I might open up to Deputy Gogarty as well if you would like to come in.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. My apologies because I am a little bit hoarse today but I did want to get into the committee. I will focus my questions, if the Minister does not mind, on the tourism sector, because we had a presentation from the Irish Hotels Federation, IHF, recently and a couple of points were made in that discussion. I just want to tie it in and get the Minister's feedback on them. One is on our potential as a conference destination. given that a lot of hotels such as, for example, Citywest in my constituency, have been repurposed as IPAS and Ukrainian accommodation. Have there been talks with ministerial colleagues on having specific dedicated accommodation that would free up hotels? A lot of Ireland's potential as a destination has been diminished because of the lack of availability of large-scale conference centres. Is this being looked at over the next, say, five years as part of a rolling plan?

In terms of our unique selling points, one issue that has been raised before is Ireland as a clean, green destination. While there are grants available to hotels to improve their insulation and provide a much more carbon-neutral service, that does not come from Fáilte Ireland. It comes from a totally different Department. Is there scope for more tie-in in terms of ring-fencing specific targeted grants? At the moment the SEAI has a business grant that hotels have applied for successfully but there should be something for the specific sector that maybe a bit more joined-up thinking could be looked at.

It has been mentioned before and it is a bit of a hoary old chestnut but I want to raise the issue of the expansion of the season. This is more of a question than a recommendation. How successful has the marketing of St. Brigid's Festival been in attracting tourists so far and what are the projections for it? Another point discussed with the Irish Hotels Federation related to Ireland's rainy nature. If we are trying to diversify through the seasons, there are different times of the year that are more rainy than others. There is very little to do outdoors when it is pelting down. Have there been any discussions with other sectors about covering over more areas, both for very sunny days and for very rainy days on key streets in key tourist destinations? That would be a game changer for the night-time economy. If people were able to sit outdoors in more areas it would attract more tourists into our historic centres.

I thank Deputy Gogarty. I really appreciate those very good questions. First of all, we have our business events strategy, which we launched a few months ago to target conferences and business events. We think there is €1 billion of opportunity contained within this strategy. We have been working very closely on it as it links into our new strategy, A New Era for Irish Tourism, which was launched on Monday.

In relation to humanitarian contracts with the State, midway through 2022 we reached about 13% of hotel accommodation being under State contract and we have got that down under 5% now. In Clare I think it was over 35%, and that is reduced below 10% now. We are now working to ensure that we bring more hotel spaces back into the economy for tourism purposes, and that is the trajectory the State is on. The Deputy will have seen recent announcements on migration and our approach in connection with that. We also have about 11,500 hotel rooms that are under construction, to be delivered next year. Some 8,660 of those are in Dublin and that will provide additional capacity, which will be very strong for the sector. There are also 36,000 more under planning permission at the moment. I think that will signal a very strong response in terms of the capacity. Outside of the main season from May to September there is a 72% occupancy rate in hotel bedrooms, so there is still significant scope for additional visitors to come in over the Lenten period. That is why we are trying to enhance those less mature markets. From St. Brigid's Day right out to Ireland as being the home of Hallowe'en we are looking to grow the less mature markets by about 7% per annum, over the next five years and this is contained in our tourism strategy. There is a huge amount of scope. St. Brigid's Day went very well but we can do a lot more. It is a new brand and it is really in its infancy in terms of the work and the promotion being done on it. I have a lot of new strategy ideas that I want to bring in with new trails, etc., and I am happy to work with the Deputy on those. I have not road-tested them as yet, so I do not want to really come forward with them. We are working under the programme for Government. I am also very happy to work with the committee on those areas. As the Cathaoirleach was saying, I would really encourage the committee to bring in State agencies. We are working together here to hold their feet to the fire as well. It is important that the committee plays its part in that. This is why the expansion of the season will be important.

Regarding energy efficiency grants, SEAI has brought in significant grants for hotels, which the Deputy alluded to. That can bring down their costs in utilities by up to 30%, so that is a very significant area. There are now 46,000 businesses providing tourism products. About one in ten jobs are supported in the economy with it. The first thing we can do to make them more viable is not to take money from them for utility bills. We want to give them grant aid to support their sustainability journey. Our LEOs also have an offering for some of the smaller businesses, namely, the energy efficiency grant, which gives a rebate of 75%, which can take €1,200 or €1,300 a month, in some cases I have seen, off bills. Businesses can do LED lighting, improve refrigeration and upgrade kitchens. All of that capital expenditure is very important.

From the middle of next year, we will have our VAT reduction. Again, that will give businesses the scope and opportunity to reinvest in their model. I see a huge horizon of more visitors coming into the country that we will working hard on. We need businesses to absorb that, businesses which can be vital to do so and that we can offer a strong value proposition. We have a lot of work to do in that regard as well.

I thank the Minister. To follow up, Japan was mentioned before. When I was a journalist back in the nineties, I was writing about direct flights to Japan. They never materialised. What are the potentials for the rugby, especially with the new league format, to promote more matches and friendlies with the involvement of the IRFU with Japan and to try to piggyback on that? Has that been done already with the internationals to try get more Japanese people to come as part of the rugby experience? That would create a knock-on word of mouth effect, especially with the likes of new trails that the Minister has mentioned. It is a huge market that we could be - for the want of a better word - exploiting or at least benefiting the Japanese tourists with a new cultural experience. Rugby is one way of doing that. There might be other countries as well with similar sporting experiences that we could leverage.

I could not agree with the Deputy more. He is quite right on that. He will have seen the American college football and the opportunity that has brought. It is more than just a game. I addressed a group of CEOs in the Mansion House. There were more than 900 of them in the room. It demonstrates how many people had come here. They were down in UCD looking at some of our exciting start-ups. They were in the farm attached to it. They were calling it "farmageddon" because of the approach. It was two very agricultural states that took part. We saw more opportunity at the NFL. In golf, we see a lot of opportunity. In relation to Japan, there are so many people in parliament in Japan who have a strong interest in rugby. That is why we have put forward in our new tourism policy a section on sports tourism and sports diplomacy, which will be a huge opportunity to strengthen ties with places like Japan. We know from our defeat in the World Cup back a number of years ago that when people went to bed they thought that for Ireland, it was only a matter of turning up when Japan beat them that time. That is still remembered fondly over there by the Japanese when we go over and visit them. We have a huge amount of opportunity to draw our two countries closer together. In architecture, music and all those areas, we have a lot in common with Japan.

As the Cathaoirleach quite rightly pointed out, we have a lot of more work. Ireland House in Japan is the biggest ever capital expenditure by Ireland in a country outside of Ireland. That is highly significant. We have Bord Bia, Tourism Ireland, the IDA and Enterprise Ireland all under the one roof and working together led by our ambassador. That will provide an opportunity to work with us in developing that model for rugby and other areas of sports tourism.

It was very interesting when we went to the National Diet - the Parliament of Japan - we were greeted by one the members of their Houses of Representatives wearing an Ireland jersey.

They will sing "Ireland's Call" if you encourage them.

We did not get that far. It was very interesting. The Minister was right to identify that. We had another who studies cookery in Ballymaloe. The chairperson of it was runner up to become Prime Minister of Japan. It is extraordinary. They allow Ministers to serve on the parliamentary engagement groups. For Ireland as a small country, we could learn an awful lot around the cultural diplomacy aspect and how that can lead to business relationships, etc. The Minister is right to identify that.

Does the Leas-Chathaoirleach wish to have any further remarks?

I have no doubt but that the Minister and all present here are taking note of the tone of the conversations today. In relation to enterprise, we cannot take away that we are almost at zero unemployment, which is a wonderful place to be. The important thing is we keep our foot down, especially in relation to new businesses. It also brings up the tone that is coming through here today is that we are nowhere near the potential in tourism. Nearly every question directed at the Minister was related to tourism. All I can do is try to bring in my experience, such as what a hotel does for a town and what happens to a town when there is no hotel. There are 32,000 rooms under planning. My concern and I have spoken to the Minister privately on this before is about how many of those will come to fruition. We need to work on that.

If you pick a small town such as, for example, Courtown, Wexford, they have planning for a hotel. There will 100 jobs for 365 days of the year. It will transform the town. The social fabric of the town will completely change once that hotel opens. There are so many threads going into a hotel opening. Young people going in to work in a hotel is one of the greatest experiences any child will have. I have seen it. I spoke to the Irish Hotels Federation about it last week. I know a young girl who went in there who had not been going to school. She came out after a summer season in a hotel transformed. We simply cannot put a price on that. If we reverse it, like my colleagues said, if a hotel has closed down or is turned into an IPAS centre, there is an effect of that on the social fabric of the town. There is everything from a christening to a burial and celebrating the life of somebody in a hotel. If that is not there, it is a huge gap. It is just to encourage those 32,000 rooms to make sure they come to fruition. That cannot be emphasised enough.

I thank the Deputy for his huge ambition in the sector and his passion. He is a firm advocate for tourism. We have met and shared ideas on the sector. If we look at the evidence, during the first ten months of this year we brought in about 5.4 million visitors. The previous year ten month comparable was 5.8 million. We are about 6% below 2024, which was a bumper year. We always look for the evidence as to what explains the reduction. From January right through to May, we had a cap. We had a reduction of 10% in flights coming into our country. That was a significant challenge in getting additional visitors in. We see in the past three months that we have increased our visitor numbers now and that is how I want to continue it. I do not want to set it as a bleak future horizon. We have so much opportunity for tourism in future. We had a bumper year in 2024, but we have 5.8 million people that have come into our country in a little over ten months. This demonstrates a good pathway for the future. Our job is to get the spend up.

One striking statistic I looked at when people talk about a value proposition is that when domestic people in here in Ireland travel outside of Ireland, they spend more on food and beverages than do people coming from overseas into Ireland. That shows the opportunity for domestic tourism as well in getting people to do more staycations, investing in our attractions around the country and investing in our hotels through Fáilte Ireland - we are doing a lot more in relation to that - and ensuring that we have the exciting opportunities, particularly with our just transition funding in the midlands. We have so many blueways, greenways, walkways and trails. I want to do a lot more with our lakes with fishing. We can have a lot more opportunities in relation to that. I recall a time when we talked about our European markets being under pressure that if you visited some of our local lakes, there were many German tourists out fishing. We want to get back to try to attract markets like that. That is why I want to get resources and boots on the ground with Tourism Ireland to get our overseas numbers back up again and into a position where we are going to start increasing them by about 6% per annum, grow our domestic tourism market and critically, get down close to our businesses, work with them and develop them. Where I want Fáilte Ireland to be is developing the business model to make them more sustainable in order that they can offer a strong proposition to people coming into our country.

There is a challenge in rural areas to make hotels viable. That is a whole-of-government approach. It is something the Government needs to consider because it is challenging. For example, in Leitrim and other areas, it can be difficult to make the commercial financial decisions stack up. We have a lot of work to do in that regard. I am happy to work with Deputy Brennan on that as we bring forward an accommodation strategy next year to try to solve some of those challenging questions.

Deputy Brennan is right in what he has identified. The town of Youghal lost 70% of its tourist accommodation on the stroke of Roderic O'Gorman's pen with the sale of the Quality Hotel, which is now one of the largest IPAS centres in the country.

There was no consultation. As a TD in the constituency, there was no opportunity to have any input into that. Now, there is no plan for the future of the town as an accommodation centre. I was down recently at a Youghal Chamber breakfast event that took place last week and with the Youghal Socio-Economic Development Group. These are very pertinent issues. There needs to be dialogue with the Department on its tourism remit around towns that have been established as tourist towns by local authorities. Some focus needs to be put in the future of tourist accommodation. Dare I mention the changes in the short-term letting situation and the impact this could have on tourism. It is a concern. Maybe at a more appropriate opportunity in January we will have the chance to discuss that issue. As the Minister knows, we have been doing a lot of scrutiny in relation to that matter. It could do a lot of harm to tourist towns as well and there is huge concern.

Referring back to the jobs and enterprise development programme in the Department, which is part of the matter being discussed at today’s meeting, I once again want to refer to the importance of Ireland’s global footprint in Asia and the Middle East region. I will briefly mention that of the four Gulf states, I believe we only have an embassy in one. We can see the pace of economic growth in that region of the world. Even if we look at the connections, there are five daily flights leaving Dublin Airport every day to the Gulf. I know that is a lot of transit traffic to other regions but the area is very quickly developing into an economic powerhouse of countries that have populations of comparable sizes to Ireland. Is there a mismatch concerning where our future is going to be in relation to the development of economic policy and the overconcentration on US investment in Ireland? The only reason I am raising this issue is that I feel that corporation tax to a certain extent is reminiscent of stamp duty in 2006 and 2007 in Ireland. We thought that was a never-ending bonanza. I know it is a much more stable foundation on the back of the Minister's Department's legacy and work, which has been extraordinary in terms of what we have succeeded in doing in Ireland, and the good work of the Minister and his predecessors, but is there an argument that this is now a very dangerous bubble? With things like AI and the increase in global conflicts, have we exposed ourselves to an enormous risk? Should we do something to, essentially, almost de-risk from that level of concentration on one country?

It is important that we grow our global footprint. Through the action plan on market diversification, we can see where we are looking to take advantage of those 41 free trade agreements the EU has with 72 countries. The IDA is working to expand its remit, as well as Enterprise Ireland. We can see that taking place in South Korea and the Asia-Pacific region, which is very important. About 50% of the world’s population is in the Asia-Pacific region, it has two thirds of the world’s growth and it is an important market that Ireland is active in. It will be seen through that strategy that life and resources are going in to follow, which will be very important.

In relation to the bigger question of our indigenous economy and corporate tax, first, people would say it is incredible to see that some of those companies bringing in that tax have been in Ireland for 60, 70 or 80 years. They have a long-standing relationship with our economy. Second, they are also very much linked into the ecosystem. It strikes me, if we look at some of the big semiconductor companies and their rosters of supply chain management, that there are 700, 800 and 900 SMEs linked into some of them. They are providing services from Banagher Precast Concrete to Kiernan Structural Steel in Longford. They are very much part of those supply chains.

I was also very struck one day when I was down in Ballinasloe with a small printing company. The managing director of that small family printing company told me it provided the paper instructions that go with the bottles of each product a life science company down the road manufactured. This just shows how interlinked they are and how important it is that we do work with them.

I hate to interrupt but did I see a statistic somewhere that five companies are contributing over 60% of corporation tax? I accept the bona fides of the Minister’s position in relation to other companies that have had a long legacy here, and it is worth referring to the fact that some of the multinationals in life science, and even Apple, have been here now for more than 30 years. It is great and fantastic. They are welcome and they are a huge part of our economy and our success story and we encourage more investment.

Just going back to mitigating risk, though, I feel we are hugely exposed to a global economic downturn and what it could do here, given the level of our exposure. My point is about coming back to how we can lay a foundation stone that will be sustainable economically for us over the course of the next 30 years, given the economic pendulum is shifting further to the east. Returning to the point I raised with the Minister, there is only one flight that leaves Dublin Airport for Asia and that is between Dublin and Beijing. We have no connections to Japan or Singapore or to other emerging economies there, like Indonesia, etc. To me, that represents an area where there is an opportunity for the Minister to engage with the Department of foreign affairs in relation to the fact it has trade under its remit to see if there is a strategic interest in having links between our country and those emerging economies and consequently strengthening our footprint there.

I would argue we are doing that. We have set in place the plans to do that through our action plan on market diversification to get into those new markets. We spoke about the opportunity to be found in those regions. We will see boots on the ground to drive more business from those areas. I was equally pointing out as well, though, how much our indigenous base has grown and the statistic, which is again evidence, that we have 450,000 people employed by the top ten Irish companies in our economy. This compares to our FDI and IDA context, where we have about 800 clients employing 300,000 people. We have, therefore, a very strong indigenous base that I want to grow. We have set a target to have 275,000 jobs supported by Enterprise Ireland over the next five years, with 1,200 new high-end start-ups, €2.2 billion in research, development and innovation, RDI, expenditure over that horizon to get more large exporters into our marketplace. That will be very important. The critical thing is that while we have exceptional corporate tax revenue coming in, it is what the Government does with it that is more important. By the end of this year, we will have €24 billion in two sovereign wealth funds. By the end of the term of this Government, we will have €50 billion in our sovereign wealth funds. This shows us how a Government prepares for a potential economic shock, because these funds can be deployed in countercyclical measures.

Additionally, the other way we prepare for shocks is by investing in capital expenditure. Next year, we will spend about €19.1 billion on capital expenditure. This has gone up 54% in just two years. Just two years ago, we had €12.4 billion in capital expenditure. If we are looking at this from a business point of view, it is about how to get the next product line, future revenue and the next service. To do this, it is necessary to invest in capital expenditure, and this is what we are doing as a country. This will really future-proof us. The work we are doing and that the Minister, Deputy Chambers, is launching this week in terms of our action plan will have 70 actions on how to get strategic projects that are vital to our economic success through the consenting mechanisms quicker. This is how we deliver for society and improve people’s quality of life, including if they are trying to get to work quicker and more safely. We need that support from capital expenditure and to ensure it is not being held up in the courts or by the Judiciary and that the Government is getting its work done. This is going to be key for the next number of years.

That de-risks us, as do our sovereign wealth funds and the work I am doing in really pointing the needle towards the indigenous economy. This can be seen in the life that has been brought into our strategy for Enterprise Ireland for the next five years. It can also be seen in the work we are doing with our local enterprise offices, LEOs. We have reduced the conditions attached to the sustainability schemes by around 60%. There are fewer questions on applications. We are working for more digital offerings to enable the growing of revenue. This is because it is about reducing costs and looking at revenue growth. We know there are businesses in this country that will never be the same again in terms of the way customers' behaviour has changed. We must, though, ask how those businesses will grow their revenue base, embrace digitalisation and get the ambition set out in the White Paper into real life and into businesses. This is what we are working on every day.

As I said to the committee, it is important it works with us on our new start-up Ireland proposal. Other mechanisms around the world were mentioned, like Station F. That is a decade old. We need to be thinking about where the future opportunities are. We need to be looking to see what areas we can explore and work in to enable us to grow. That could be in artificial intelligence, with our new office. We also have our Presidency next year. We have so many of the building blocks through academia and working with industry. This is another asset. No other country has the ecosystem we have.

The Cathaoirleach spoke about corporate tax but you cannot just pull up a company, go to another country and have the STEM and ICT graduates and ICT support it will have here. There are so many examples. We could look at NIBRT or at the Tyndall Institute down in Cork, in the Deputy's own area as well. It is doing three of the project lines for the Chips Act, as we now go to revise it. We could look at Insight, in Trinity College Dublin, which is the largest AI research centre in Europe, or at the work done by CeADAR. There is also INSPIRE that the Minister, Deputy James Lawless, launched this week, Digital Manufacturing Ireland, DMI, in Limerick and Irish Manufacturing Research, IMR, in my own home town. These are all providing academia with industry partnership so they can innovate and be at the cutting edge of that huge wealth of knowledge to stand them in good stead for the future.

If we bring all of those components together, we will be in good shape.

I accept what the Minister has said. We will never be able to provide a facility of the scale and size of Station F but it is worth referring to it, even though it is a decade old. Through its incubation policies, the French has created in and around 30 domestic companies of unicorn status, that is, companies with a valuation of over $1 billion.

We have our own unicorns, you know.

I know. I am just making the point.

I hear you.

We will never be able to match that scale but the same companies that are in Station F have their European headquarters here.

We can learn from them.

Of course we can.

We can work together on it.

That is the point.

We are at one.

One a positive note, it is great to see that Ireland is now the fifth largest investor into the United States. I was with the Minister's colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, at the opening of the Ireland House facility in Chicago with the ambassador, Geraldine Byrne Nason. That is very positive. There is a positive counterflow of US investment here. Of course, that is welcome but it is worth mentioning that there is a concentration on a very slim number of companies and the extent to which we are now relying on them for tax revenue. This question has been raised in the media and it has been raised by economists. It is worthy of consideration here in the committee.

I have outlined how we should respond to that.

I thank the Minister. I will now call on his party colleague, Deputy John Clendennen, to be followed by Deputy Lawlor.

I thank the Minister for joining us. I met him earlier this morning in Athlone, where we saw the level of energy and enthusiasm from transition year students and from agencies and businesses right across the midlands. It has often been considered one of the weaker regions but it is growing in strength as a result of what this Government and the Minister are doing to bring about balanced regional development right across the country. I acknowledge that. I particularly refer to what they have done in budget 2026 with regard to protecting jobs and industries through the 9% VAT rate initiative and with regard to Ireland as a place to work through increasing the minimum wage, auto-enrolment, holiday pay, sick pay and so on. Deliberations are ongoing with regard to getting the balance right between Ireland being a great place to work and it being a great place to own, run or invest in a business. We need to continue to focus on getting that balance right.

Many business owners raise the challenges around the cost base with me. We are making progress on insurance reform. Energy is obviously an ongoing issue. On a practical level, when I get feedback from businesses, many of them ask why these initiatives are being managed through the likes of the local enterprise offices when they should really be the responsibility of the SEAI. Reducing emissions and making businesses more efficient is a journey. Business owners go to the local enterprise office for a grant on one occasion but are then lost until there is another call for applications. We should have some sort of register to identify these businesses and keep them on an ongoing pathway to reducing emissions and increasing efficiencies in order to reduce their cost bases.

From the perspective of access to finance, there seems to be a frustration about the pillar banks not delivering on finance for many smaller businesses. In some cases, businesses are being told to trade for six months to prove they are viable before coming back to the banks. They need that finance now. They need it to progress with their businesses. They need to ensure that innovation and development continue. The SBCI has been particularly good in this regard. Where businesses experience a shock for particular reasons, opportunities are provided for them to engage. That has worked well. I ask the Minister to continue to engage on that. He made reference to Microfinance Ireland and what it has done. That is important but we need to continue in this area.

In every walk of life in Ireland, we talk about de-risking and the need to take a feasible approach. I think we need to start talking more about failures. We need to encourage investment in innovation, which we are doing. However, we always talk about the success stories. We do not necessarily talk about businesses that have explored the possibility of doing something and invested a certain amount only for it not to work out. That is something we need to work on more. We should not always just talk about the success stories because there are failures out there. That is important.

There is one area I would ask the Minister to look at. We have had debates and discussions in the Chamber on IDA lands and how to ensure we see investment right across the country but there is a problem at a lower level. There are businesses in our rural towns that want to expand and grow but simply do not have access to capital or land. They need it now. There is an opportunity here for local authorities. They could be the lead stakeholder in developing enterprise parks in smaller towns. Let the IDA keep working on large-scale foreign direct investment but, at a smaller scale at rural level, there should be industrial parks or enterprise parks - call them what you like. There is a very good example of this in Offaly with the enterprise park in Ferbane, where we see everything from food development to printing to childcare. However, there is a problem right now with access to capital. If we do this right, not only can the local authority be a stakeholder in driving this forward and developing it, but the parks can become revenue generators for those local authorities in the long term. Will the Minister explore that in more detail?

I thank Deputy Clendennen for his remarks and for the work he carried out prior to the budget in working with businesses, hearing their views and seeing where the cost pressures were to allow us to develop our policy response. Obviously, the 9% VAT rate was a key response for the hospitality sector, which I believe will shore up 228,000 jobs and allow businesses in hospitality, like those the Deputy is aware of in his home county, to invest, giving them viability and breathing space. We have a lot more work to do in respect of those businesses next year.

The Deputy quite rightly pointed out the balance we are trying to achieve between viability and ensuring that businesses have lower costs. We have done a lot of work over recent months in reassessing the trajectory to a living wage and in carrying out work on our sick pay scheme and permit thresholds. A huge amount of work has been carried out.

I will address the Deputy's specific questions. On land and enterprise parks, we in the Department are trying to develop a scheme in that regard. The Deputy is right. Particularly for smaller manufacturing businesses, getting land, those serviced sites, is a pressure point. The local authority can be a key focal point and delivery mechanism for that. We will be looking at how we can work more closely with local authorities to deliver that. I will work closely with the Deputy in trying to bring about such a scheme.

With regard to finance, last year we raised the threshold for Microfinance Ireland to €50,000. That was a response to our smaller SMEs. As I referred to earlier in the hearing, we are on the third iteration of the credit guarantee scheme, which was the Ukraine guarantee scheme. That is now almost full up. We are looking at negotiating a successor scheme with the Department of agriculture. I hope we will be able to announce that next year. It would result in more funding going into our SMEs, giving them an opportunity to expand their market share and reinvest in their businesses, which is going to be key. We will have Microfinance Ireland, which we put more money into today and which we will support next year, and I hope we will also have another iteration of the guarantee scheme.

In relation to energy, SEAI obviously has a very strong offering but I am trying to improve the structure of the schemes LEOs are delivering. The Deputy will see that the number of questions attached to sustainability schemes has been reduced by 60%. We are trying to make things in the Department and throughout our agencies simpler, lighter and faster. Earlier this year, we brought in all the agencies and said that we want to help businesses, that time is their most critical and prized resource and that we need to work very closely with them. We know that many small family businesses do not have a HR director or a finance director. All the work is done sitting around the kitchen table, trying to manage survival and keeping the business going. We want to work with them to ensure there is proportionate regulation attached to the money we spend to support them. We are doing that as hard as we can right now. We are having the fourth or fifth meeting of our cost of doing business advisory forum. This will look at the interoperability of all the regulators in the business environment and how we can further align licensing and consenting processes to support businesses. You can hear the real-life testimony of businesses in that room. We will be doing a lot of work on that next year with the Deputy, the Cathaoirleach and the committee.

I will make one other point in relation to local enterprise offices. I acknowledge the work they do but their role has expanded over time. They sit under the auspices of Enterprise Ireland but are based in the local authorities. Sometimes I get the sense that they are being stretched in two directions.

We need to continuously monitor and review how local enterprise offices work in the best interest of serving the commercial sector of different counties.

I absolutely agree with that. We are looking to do a bit of reform work next year with the LEOs and local authorities on their value offering. Enterprise Ireland has a service level agreement with them. I want Enterprise Ireland to do more in terms of establishing a unit dedicated to working with the LEOs because at the moment, they are a little bit caught between two stools. There is a set of protocols and procedures to go through with local authorities and with Enterprise Ireland. Sometimes grants that should be quite easy are made a little difficult, especially when you are talking about revenue growth and support in relation to skills and so on. We can do a lot more work on that. I will be happy to work with the committee and Deputy Clendennen on that.

I thank the Minister.

I will back up one point Deputy Clendennen raised about the IDA coming to rural towns. Athlone has a very successful advanced IDA facility. That model is such a positive for small rural towns that are away from city blocks that need that level of investment. I did engage with the IDA in the previous Dáil term under the previous chief executive and I went in with the best of intentions with a local group. We did not even get a response and I was disappointed about that. I have raised it with the agency previously.

How peripheral rural towns can be helped needs to be brought back into the dialogue. We are obviously not going to get a large pharmaceutical manufacturer to walk into a town and set up shop. It is looking for three or four national strategic sites at the moment, which we have discussed here previously. However, there is a lot of merit in what Deputy Clendennen has raised and it may be something the Department can give a little bit of focus and attention to. I am referencing my home town of Youghal again, but that is a town that once had nearly 4,000 people working in manufacturing and low-skilled labour. Kodak made flash cameras there and Power Products and Youghal Carpets were there too. People worked in manufacturing. Over the course of about five or six years, the entire industry and employment in the local town was wiped out. Towns like that would just die on their knees to get the IDA to come in and build advanced centres again. Together with the IDA chairman, Feargal O'Rourke, the Minister is very familiar with Athlone and the success it has had with IDA locally and what that has meant for the town and its environs. We would love the likes of that where I am from, if it was ever possible.

My point was that it would be a step below the IDA and would be led by the local authority. There is an appetite among local authorities because they see it from a revenue generation perspective, both from the rent side but also a commercial rates perspective. They have the skills and expertise from a development perspective, considering all of the public realm projects they are involved in as well.

One hundred percent, and I thank the Deputy for raising it. We go next to Deputy Lawlor of the Labour Party.

This morning, the Minister may have been made aware that the team at Rosslare Europort announced a major planning application for the development of an offshore renewable energy hub in the port itself. The total footprint is about 80 ha, if we include the port and what is proposed, some 27 ha of reclamation to facilitate the construction and servicing of offshore renewable energy turbines. As part of that, it will include the deepening of the port and the construction of a couple of new berths to service. The deepening of the port will result in larger ships being able to come in, which will in turn facilitate the arrival of load-on, load-off ferries. Rosslare is currently the busiest roll-on, roll-off ferry terminal on the island. That, in turn, will lead to the reopening of the Rosslare to Waterford rail line, because you can only bring freight on that line. You cannot do it on the Dublin line because of tunnels in Wicklow.

This is a huge opportunity, not just for Rosslare or Wexford but indeed the entire region, where we will have a situation where green energy will be coming ashore. I have seen in other parts of the world that where there is green energy, companies follow because they wish to partake in the green energy agenda. There is huge potential for regional development in that part of the country.

Rosslare is owned by Iarnród Éireann. It cannot do this proposal by itself, it needs State intervention and financial assistance. A joined-up approach from various different Departments within the State is required to really make this work. There was an argument in the past to say that commercial ports or harbours could not be funded. That is an Irish concept, as opposed to what we were told in the past, which was that it was a European concept. The thing about this particular development is the strategic, regional nature of it. It is not just about facilitating the development of a port in the south-east corner of Ireland, it is about creating a hub where indigenous industry in particular can develop and indeed foreign direct investment can flourish also.

Dublin Port, as the Minister knows, is bursting at the seams. It can attract enterprise outside of the major centres to an area, and we have just discussed smaller IDA or enterprise parks. This is a huge opportunity for the entire region. I ask the Minister’s view on the various Departments coming together to support this initiative and development, given that Iarnród Éireann requires investment to make this happen and become a reality.

I thank Deputy Lawlor. He raises a very important issue. He is a huge supporter of Rosslare Europort, which is critical to our success in the offshore renewable sector. He will be very much aware of the projects that are taking place and are in various stages of planning along the east coast. It is absolutely critical that we have logistic and supply chains resolved through the port, which will be so important for its success. Post Brexit in particular, we have seen the routes through Rosslare increase exponentially. From my Department's perspective, we can forward a supply chain resilience document called Powering Prosperity, in which we list 40 actions across different sectors of the supply chain to assist in the development of offshore renewable wind. We have about 97%, all but one action completed on that.

In our budget we focused heavily on research, development and innovation, RDI, again looking at the new technology that will be used by a lot of those offshore companies which have come into the marketplace, to help them have technological solutions in respect of a lot of the areas that are still ever evolving as they go through the planning process. I would also say that we have about 5 GW of capacity at the east coast, which is huge and very significant, considering our country uses about 6 GW presently. This will give us a very significant opportunity. I work with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, in connection with it. We are shortly going to sign off our offshore wind centre of excellence, with the Department. It is working on a business case for it. That will support the delivery of that first key east coast gambit, which is absolutely critical.

I hope the Europort will benefit significantly from the new infrastructure plans we are bringing forward this week in terms of how we deliver those projects that are absolutely of strategic importance for the success of our country. I view Rosslare, as we have during the development through Brexit, as one of those key areas that we have to really support and invest in. I will raise the Deputy’s concerns with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and indeed the Government, because I know the Deputy is very much committed to the port and development of industry. We have to get this right as a Government because we have a very narrow window in terms of the offshore space to prove success and if investors do not see us delivering in that sector over the next number of years, it will really damage our reputation. I am very much at one with the Deputy, and will raise his concerns and try to get more information for him in terms of what is happening with the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment and across Government.

I very much appreciate the Minister’s comments. Given this is a €220 million proposal, it is essential that the Government does fall in behind it because, as the Minister has outlined it, the potential is huge. From a regional and spatial point of view, it is equally huge, and would be a good day's work for any Government to support. I welcome the Minister’s comments, and I look forward to hearing from him.

Can we can work together on it?

Absolutely.

That concludes contributions from members. I thank the Minister and his officials for their attendance at this session and their engagement with the committee. We look forward to meeting with them again in January on this subject.

We will suspend for five minutes before resuming to commence Committee Stage of the Protection of Employees (Employers' Insolvency) (Amendment) Bill 2025.