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

I know Deputy Collins is very committed to mentoring. In the regional calls under the community enterprise initiative, which is a €5 million call, we looked specifically for proposals on regional volunteer mentoring. Some people who would like to be mentors do not want to be on an open portal and want to have it brokered. That has been an issue in terms of whether it should be brokered. Some people like the idea of just providing some hours which are open to all comers while others are keen to have a brokerage. The extent to which such a platform needs to be brokered or can be open will be one of the issues that, hopefully, the pilot teases out.

I agree completely with Deputy Collins on the enterprise allowance. It is a very valuable allowance. There are also grants available under that. There is €2,500 in grant money which is not restricted to export potential. There is hard grant money available to people starting up in that area. I would be pleased to get the technical leadership training proposal Deputy Collins has. If there is a gap, we would be keen to look at it. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Simon Coveney, is establishing a new Food 2025 group of which Enterprise Ireland is a member. He has had a co-ordinated group across the food agencies. If a challenge is emerging in that area, EI will collaborate with whoever to try to fix the gap. I will perhaps get that from Deputy Collins off air, so to speak.

We are not looking at increasing the €25,000 limit at this point. There are issues around the de minimisapproach involved here and we are not quite at the point where we are going to rejig the cap. We carried out a review last year and the changes proposed were the ones which have been acknowledged, including removing the refusal requirement and trying to get a better brokerage between the bank and microfinancing in order that there is better referral. At this point, it was not recommended that the limit would be changed. There is an assumed bad debt level of 25% built into the programme. As such, if one pushes it up, one is getting into other areas. We are trying to build out the other instruments for business and that approach is being successful. One of the areas being looked at is crowdfunding, which has been an issue for some members. It is on the radar of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. We are looking at filling out the range of options. One of the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland's major mandates is to bring new entrants to the marketplace. Trying to bring in new products and new players is a very important element in a rather restricted field.