Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with an awful lot of what the Minister of State said, but we need to establish an Irish enterprise agency for a number of reasons. The Minister of State will agree that our over-reliance on a number of major international corporations is a risk to the State going forward, with ten companies paying a significant proportion of corporation tax. Any changes to this, which would be well out of our control, could put grave stress on our public finances. While it is imperative that we continue to attract foreign direct investment and to achieve export growth, it is equally important that we grow our indigenous sectors to provide balance in our economy and additional security for our public finances. Transforming the LEOs into a larger and more ambitious agency can deliver strong benefits to domestic businesses, workers and the State. That is why I raised this matter previously with the Minister of State. It is an idea we need to look at and we need to do a bit more than what the Minister of State spoke about. We need a stronger and more specific focus on SMEs and small companies. There is great potential for growth in the SME sector in the coming years. We need to protect that and a focused organisation would do that. Some LEOs are excellent but others are not so excellent, to put it mildly.

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