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

To be fair to Commissioner Tajani, he certainly has a sense of urgency. Europe has put its money behind it. The Horizon 2020 programme involved a substantial increase in a welcome sense from an Irish point of view because we are top of the league in terms of access to funds for SMEs under the programme. The programme has increased the proportion going to small and medium-sized enterprises from 15% to 20%. The Commission has identified as key priorities advanced manufacturing, key enabling technologies and bio-based products. The Commission goes through the list in the document. Clearly, delivery is everything in this area. There is a clear view within the European Council and the Heads of State, that a growth strategy is needed for Europe and that growth strategy will be a micro-growth strategy. It is in these areas. It is a political judgment to say whether there is a sense of urgency but I believe there is a sense of urgency. Clearly, we would like to see more. As the committee is aware, a budgetary ceiling was put on what member states would agree to under the European budget for the coming years and, therefore, Europe must work within the budgetary constraints.
Reference was made to state aid modernisation, which deals with a broad area. There are aspects relating to reform of the de minimusrule. The Commission is increasing the de minimusrule. There are several aspects but regional aid is the area of most interest for people in Ireland and we need to advance a new regional aid map by the end of June. In the coming weeks we will be finalising an approach to the regional aid map. It is currently being examined by the various agencies in respect of the balance that must be struck.
In the negotiations there was a rather negative starting point. The proposal was to reduce it such that 25% of the country would have been covered by aid. However, through the negotiation of the directives we got it back up to 51.28% in an Irish context, which is marginally more than where we were under the previous regional aid map.
The other hotly-contested issue was the proposal by the Commission to remove large companies from the so-called C regions. The proposal was that there would be no aid to large companies in the C regions. Again, that was re-negotiated and, essentially, large company aid is still permitted once it relates to diversification, new products or processes or new economic activities. Large company aid remains a possibility within the so-called C regions. Either a country is in regional aid or otherwise and this means the C regions in the context of Ireland. We do not have any A regions.
The Deputy is right about the re-shoring. There was an interesting case recently in Cork involving Tyco, which had pulled out of Cork and left only a small compliance team. Significantly, the compliance team proved rather strategic within the organisation and this helped to win back significant investment. We are alert to the opportunities in this sphere. The Eishtec case involved business process outsourcing but, again, it is interesting that there is growing interest in on-shoring. Where a high-quality added-value service is delivered, it can compete and the vogue for off-shoring is somewhat less than it was. There are opportunities for Ireland in this regard.