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

I have looked at the literature on entrepreneurship because we are drawing up this policy and it focuses on networks that are not created by government. The Government can do a certain amount, but the magic ingredient is often in the business-led networks, whether through mentoring or allowing products get onto shelves, or angel investors. A large part of these successful regions and start-ups are created by entrepreneurs and enterprise. We need to see how to engage that more effectively. We have some excellent examples, some really good incubators and accelerators, and some high-performing individuals who have become serial entrepreneurs, who continually re-seed and give their time generously to support others. Thickening out that network is the challenge, as well as what the Senator says. We need to continue to do the things we are doing. The seed capital programme, whereby a PAYE taxpayer can get up to €600,000 to invest in a new company, is virtually unused. We need to popularise it and make it more usable.

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, has introduced corporate tax breaks such that if one sets up a company one has a restricted tax liability in the first three years, and has applied the same rules to an unemployed person who sets up as self-employed. We are introducing a simpler form of licensing which will make it easier for the retail trade to be compliant. We are trying to simplify all the pieces needed to be compliant by halving the time it takes to set up a company and to get work permits.

There is much we can do, but the magic ingredient is how to build an ecosystem. Much of that comes from the education and research and access to finance pieces of the jigsaw, but the challenge is to get those working together. The key to the success of regions that successfully encourage entrepreneurship is the way they have thickened out the whole network, rather than some magic bullet of a tax-free scam for X, Y or Z. The policy we develop will attempt to nudge all the pieces of the jigsaw, from the education system at the start through the start-up phase, the access to finance phase and the mentoring and networking phase. The challenge is to develop all of those elements, but we will be knocking on the doors of people like Senator Quinn's business colleagues to ask how their businesses can make it easier to get shelf space. I know Senator Quinn's former company is a good example of one that offered shelf space to new product. We want to spread a belief throughout the whole community that supporting new start-ups is part of what we want to achieve.