Mr. Tom Hayes:

It is fair to say that for a business with two or three people that is providing a service and where there is ambition, scope or opportunity at some stage down the road to develop an export market, that operation will be supported by the local enterprise office.

It can be supported in two ways. Financial support is a great way to give them a start. Our survey showed that financial support is very valuable and useful but soft support is much more valuable at that stage, whether through the provision of a mentor, a start your own business programme, the use of social media to develop their business or provision a marketing plan. The local enterprise office can provide all those sorts of supports, whether or not the company ever has the ambition to export. The financial support can follow that. Once a company can demonstrate that it has a roadmap for one, two or three years to take its service to an overseas market, the local enterprise office can support it. If it is providing a local service, competing with another company in the next town, there is no reason for the State to support it because it is creating displacement.