Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The past 18 months have been extraordinarily difficult both for people personally and for businesses. Fortunately, we are now in a much better space due to the sacrifices made by many and prudent Government policies, difficult as they were. That collective effort has enabled Ireland to rebound and achieve significant progress, allowing us to look ahead to a return to near-normal economic activity. Indeed, Ireland was recently listed as the best country in the world in terms of our attainment in beginning to live with the pandemic, topping the Bloomberg Covid resilience ranking. Budget 2022 is underpinned by the Government's commitment to maintaining this positive momentum, supporting businesses through the challenges of the past year and a half and, most important, looking ahead to the opportunities that will enable us to move with certainty into economic recovery. It includes several pro-business measures that offer a needed reprieve for businesses still grappling with the effects of the pandemic, including the extension of the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, the targeted commercial rates waiver and the 9% VAT rate for the hospitality sector.

Looking to the future, embracing digital technologies is crucial for our post-pandemic economic recovery. A competitive, innovative and resilient enterprise base is essential to providing high-quality jobs and employment opportunities in order that people can live and prosper in all regions. Businesses can harness digital technology in many ways to understand their customers better, reduce their costs and improve their products. Given the pivotal role of SMEs in Ireland and their importance to the regional and national economy, we must support them in their digital journey and transformation. To boost the uptake of digital technology in enterprises, we have set up the digital transition fund. This is an €85 million multi-annual fund that will run until 2026. Under budget 2022, we have allocated €10 million to the fund, which will help to increase digitalisation of all businesses across products, processes, supply chains and business models. This will bring about productivity gains, access to new markets, increased innovation and improved competitiveness.

We also want to support enterprises to look at the possibilities of adopting new technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and cloud computing. Adopting new technology can be daunting for enterprises. We want to make it as accessible as possible for them. To help make the technology more readily available to SMEs in Ireland, we will establish a number of European digital innovation hubs, which will be part of a Europe-wide network. Yesterday, the Government allocated €3 million to the European digital innovation hubs for 2022. The hubs are an initiative to build the strategic digital capabilities of the EU and facilitate wide deployment of digital technologies. They will play a crucial role in facilitating the digitalisation of SMEs across industries and regions through services such as test before invest, innovation and finance advice, training, and skills development.

Balanced regional development is a core priority for the Government and me. As the Minister of State, Deputy English, outlined, work is progressing on the nine regional enterprise plans to 2024, which will recognise the opportunities and challenges of each region and leverage their unique strengths for the benefit of local businesses and communities. On 6 October, we announced that €9.3 million is to be allocated to 24 enterprise projects under the Department's regional enterprise transition scheme. I am pleased the Government has announced an additional €5 million for the regional enterprise development fund. I expect further funding to be announced as part of the launch of the scheme later this year.

I refer to the allocation to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, which is under my remit. The programme for Government contains a commitment to increase the enforcement powers of the CCPC by way of introduction of an administrative sanctions regime. This budget has allocated a further €1.5 million for the CCPC for 2022. That reflects the fact the consumer rights Bill and the competition Bill will be enacted later this year, providing increased powers for the CCPC to ensure effective enforcement of competition and consumer rights law and consequently enhancing the protection of businesses and consumers.

See this speech in context