James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On sub-head A 5, the Minister mentioned the online trading voucher scheme which has been very successful and I congratulate the Minister and the Department on that. I have seen many businesses in my own constituency avail of it and the local enterprise office has been very proactive in pushing it out and encouraging its usage. When my own constituency office highlighted it, it was inundated with local businesses coming in and asking questions about how they could avail of it. It is a success story all round. I also take the Minister's point that there was not the take-up there might have been, as there were allocations that were not drawn down.

According to the local enterprise office which was to the forefront of pushing out the scheme, there was some feedback from the businesses that the scheme was all or nothing. They could draw down the voucher of up to €2,500 but some of them may have just wanted to take €1,000 to do a bit of dabbling, put up a website and get it going and then maybe six months later they could put in a back office, with a sales side or whatever it was, but they could not draw down in tranches. Apparently, this was a problem for some businesses especially if they were putting their first toe into the water of the Internet, that they drew down a small amount, thinking they could complete the job later in the year but were then told that they had put in their application. They would nearly have been better off putting in for the full €2,500 but then they may not have had immediate use for that. I am sure they could have found it but it would not have been the optimum use. Maybe the Minister and the Department could look at whether in the future the scheme could be allocated in installments or drawn down as it is used. The local enterprise office has said that while it is a very useful and popular scheme that has been a practical issue.