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

I will examine the position and will ask my officials to talk to the Deputy further on it. It cuts both ways. Some of these investment funds have bought the loans quite cheaply and on some occasions they are willing to enter into reasonable restructuring arrangements. We are keen to try to fill the gap in so far as we can. I will get an official to track down some of the examples the Deputy has mentioned so that we can see whether we can accommodate them.

In regard to being three years or more on the live register, it is a striking feature of the QHNS that in the past two years, some 75% of the people who have left the live register have been long-term unemployed, while 25% have been short-term unemployed. Therefore, there is an impact on the long-term unemployment rate as reported in the QHNS. Back in 2012, the Pathways to Work programme specifically targeted long-term unemployed people. It targets and tracks this cohort and has set a target of getting all of these people back into work. They are consciously tracked within the programme. This is one of the areas where the programme is ahead of target, in terms of the progress it is making with that group. The Deputy is right, we always face the danger of people falling between the cracks when we get a shift in sectors. There is not an easy fit between the skill base of the old sectors in decline and the new sectors. This is an area that will require sustained work and we need to refresh the instruments for doing that continually. The call for apprenticeships this year will, I hope, provide a significant opportunity and we must ensure we help people progress to those opportunities.

I understand the Deputy's fear that we might have a one-size-fits-all enterprise strategy in the regions, but that is not our intention. We have a regional manager of Enterprise Ireland or the IDA in charge of each region. These have a mandate to do the preparatory work in the region, to identify within each region the actions that will come from the education and training boards, the IDA and Enterprise Ireland and to bring in the stakeholders to consider what new actions can be taken. We will have a competitive call for funding and will look not for replicas of previous ideas but for the best ideas from each region. We expect them to build off regional strengths. We are trying to structure the strategy in a way that it is not a replica of previous strategies. The strategy must from be bottom up if it is to succeed. From the IDA perspective, there will be some top-down input in that it has to look at the identification of sites for advance facilities. Essentially, these are identified around magnets, such as institutes of technology or similar.

On the broadband question, I understand the tender is to go out in 2016 and that work is under way so that we can have a tender by the end of the year. Much of the mapping work has been done.

In regard to red tape, it is not in any way an eroding of people's rights. We would see the Workplace Relations Commission, where the same delays are no longer being encountered, as providing a saving. Also, the new companies legislation means that from June of this year, people will be able to set up a company with one director and with no requirement for an AGM. One document sets out the company. This is a saving, as is the cutting of the threshold for an audit for such a small business. These are the sort of savings we are after. We have identified in the plan interactions between the State and business, where we feel going on line or adopting a new approach will improve effectiveness and reduce compliance cost. However, this in no way alters the policy objectives underpinning the setting up of a company.

On the role of Údarás na Gaeltachta, it is intimately involved in our entrepreneurship roll-out and both through our implementation group and the regional implementation group. We see the údarás as a central player and stakeholder.

Its remit is stronger in certain regions than others, but we see it as a crucial player, so we are integrating it into that process.