Áine Collins (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Ms Sinnamon and her team are very welcome. I apologise for missing the start of the meeting but I was delayed in travelling from Cork. I am sorry if some of the questions I raise have already been covered. My first point is addressed to Mr. Hayes and concerns the local enterprise offices. I am concerned that there seems to be a lot of politics going on between the LEOs, the Leader programmes and the county councils in regard to delivering training, mentoring and so on. If a person approaches one of these organisations, it seems he or she cannot then go to the others. I do not want to get too local but I was recently involved in efforts to deliver a programme in Millstreet, which involved working with Cork Institute of Technology. The PINC programme, with which the delegates will be very familiar, is a female entrepreneurship programme. Our objective was, for the first time ever, to take that programme out of an institute and bring it into a region, which would have been quite innovative in itself. However, we found ourselves very challenged when it came to securing funding. We went to a local economic fund and the county council but they could not provide any funding because that would upset the LEO. We had 24 female entrepreneurs signed up and ready to do the programme but no funding to deliver it. Many of these women could not access the programme at Cork Institute of Technology because it is an hour's drive away and they have children and so on.

As I said, there is a lot of politics going on at local level. Is there any way we could better collaborate to address the difficulties? After all, we are all paid by the taxpayer to do a job, which is to deliver a service to our customers, in this case the people who are trying to start or grow a business. It should be possible to do so without having to fight through the ream of politics that seems to be going on behind the scenes. I realise this is something the delegates cannot fix on their own and some of it comes down to the need for a policy from Government on how to manage it. However, some input from the witnesses on this matter would be helpful. Competition is good but I have real concerns when it is having the types of effects I am seeing. Some of the players involved will not run programmes out in the regions but only in their own offices. Many of the people we are trying to attract, people who are trying to get businesses off the ground, might not have access to public transport or full-time access to a car. We have a lot of young people who are long-term unemployed and we should be encouraging them to consider setting up a business and putting the supports in place to facilitate them. All of that is a real challenge.

Another concern of mine relates to the food industry. While I appreciate that we are doing very well in this space, there seem to a gaps in provision and support. For example, I read in The Sunday Business Posta few weeks ago about the importance of technical leadership. I understand Enterprise Ireland is not in a position to deliver that type of support because it is not general leadership. Do we need to implement some change in that regard? I have spoken to the Minister about it but am interested in the delegates' views. I recently saw a chart which showed all of the bodies that a food start-up in Ireland must deal with, including Bord Bia, Teagasc, Enterprise Ireland and so on. There is a huge amount of regulation involved. As a first step, the introduction of one portal would be a huge improvement. When I looked for information on female accelerator programmes on Enterprise Ireland's website, I found details of a recent event in Tralee, which I attended, but nothing about how female entrepreneurs can access an accelerator programme. Perhaps some work could be done on devising an information portal?

On a related point, the last time the delegates were here, I spoke about making the website more user-friendly. I hear from a lot of people that it is hard to get information. As I said, technical leadership in the food industry would give us a leader advantage because there is nobody else in Europe doing it. They are looking at it in North America. We should make it easy for people by having information in one place. I am sure that could be done through data analytics co-ordinating it behind the scenes. Enterprise Ireland could lead on that.

I mentioned the website. We are all concerned about the skills gap. I am glad that Skillnets is out there and SOLAS is up and running, so perhaps we will see some changes in that regard.

I know Enterprise Ireland has gone through an internal strategic review and there have been some changes. The delegates might comment on that.