Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be very brief. I will do it in five minutes.

My understanding is that Enterprise Ireland currently owns no sites and that any sites owned in rural Ireland are actually owned by IDA Ireland. As planning requirements get more difficult, should IDA Ireland's sites be transferred to Enterprise Ireland and should there be a policy of having serviced sites - not buildings - available for enterprise as well as the community enterprise centres? Should there be serviced sites in towns so that if an entrepreneur is starting out he or she does not have to start out ab initiowith a planning application?

I think this question is best directed at the Western Development Commission. There is need for what might be called long-term technical venture funding. If there is a 20 or 30-year payback, it might not be called technical venture funding. Is there need for some system of long-term funding to be made available in share capital by the State to start-up companies to ensure they have plenty of working capital?

How much is a lack of basic infrastructure such as roads and mobile and broadband coverage as well as perhaps electricity and water supply an inhibitor of industry and business in rural areas?

Would it be possible to have a map prepared that would show us where Enterprise Ireland industries are located throughout the country? Could it be colour coded between food industries, technology industries and so on as well as by size? There is a myth that the only industries in rural Ireland are micro-industries that relate to natural resources such as food, but my knowledge tells me the situation is not quite so simple. We need to get the facts: where are they placed, what size are they and how should they be categorised. Is it possible to get that information?

Are the State tendering turnover requirements inhibiting smaller local companies from tendering for State jobs, even quite modestly sized jobs? Should all the major tenders have a clause to ensure that where big multinational companies win tenders they would have to employ local labour? I think such a clause is used in the North of Ireland.