Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Collins has a great interest in mentoring. I saw recently an interesting point in a review of mentoring to the effect that two thirds of all mentoring is of start-up businesses while only one third is of existing businesses. The point was made that this is not a proper balance. One should really be considering the strengthening of one's existing base of SMEs or micro-enterprises. That reflects the point that Deputy Collins is making. We need to look not only to the start-up businessman walking in the door but also to the assets in many micro-businesses that are already in place to determine whether the latter can be strengthened with a view to development. A general weakness of ours lies in this area. Part of looking afresh at manufacturing involves recognising that we have considerable manufacturing capability, often in rural areas, that could be the source of greater growth. I accept the point in this regard.

On Deputy Tóibín's point, we are determined that there will be local access. Since we set up the action plan for jobs process, we have had the objective of going into the communities to meet the businesspeople. We expect LEOs to be working with local business networks and to provide opportunities for people to have an input regarding their work. This is not to create some sort of detached ivory tower. I do not believe a board is necessary for what we desire. What we need is to set a standard and an expectation of how the work should be done. It is a question of having a pro-enterprise, pro-entrepreneurship location in the county and using influence and power to create the appropriate environment. An absolute requirement is that the LEOs would be networking regularly with their client base. I agree that we need to have the offices plugged into local enterprise. I do not agree that we need a board to do that as the system we have can deliver it.