Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I sit on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight and it is always scheduled at the same time. I try to bilocate and I have not figured out how to be in two places at once yet.

My first question is about Brexit. I apologise if the witnesses have already dealt with some of these questions when I was not here. I caught some of the end of their answers to a previous speaker about the Be Prepared grant. It is anticipated that 100 or so businesses might sign up to that grant. If everybody took the maximum of €5,000, it would only amount to €500,000. In the context of how huge Brexit is, it is probably not a huge amount of financial support from the State to businesses.

I am spokesperson on Brexit for my party, Fianna Fáil, so I have looked at this a little more. There appears to be a genuine lack of preparedness across the board. I accept what the witnesses are saying is that, until companies or individuals are faced with the impact of Brexit, there may be a reluctance to prepare because if one has limited finances and wants to hire an extra worker, spend money on marketing one's business or whatever, it is difficult to justify spending money on the unknown that may never happen. The approach our Government is taking is not to prepare too much so there is not a self-fulfilling prophecy. That attitude is permeating our business community.

The key sector that we all agree will probably be worst-hit is the agrifood sector. That may affect the regions more than the cities. I represent a rural constituency in Mayo. Agrifood and agriculture is a huge employer in the constituency, as it is across the west of Ireland, and indeed nationally. I am not saying that the west is more affected than the rest of the country. Coming from the Committee on Budgetary Oversight earlier, a suggestion from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, which was the first I had heard about it, was to have a Brexit adjustment assistance fund. I asked what exactly that is and how it might work. The thinking behind it was that if we know for a fact that we will lose employment or that there will be fewer jobs in a sector, we need to have money and supports in place to help these employees to retrain for a different sector, to get into different areas of employment and to help businesses diversify. I would appreciate the witnesses' response about what we could do to put something in place to help to prepare workers for a possible reduction in job opportunities in a particular sector, specifically agrifood.

My local enterprise office, LEO, is very good. It is fantastic to work with. I often refer budding entrepreneurs or small businesses that are looking to expand to it. It has had some brilliant success stories. What do the witnesses see as being the role of the LEO in a post-Brexit world where we want to diversify and get into new markets? How do they see the role of the LEO working with regard to regional investment and jobs?

To move away from Brexit slightly, an area which we need to do much more work on which goes across a number of Departments and not just the witnesses' own, is the female participation rate in the workforce. It is an area where we can make huge progress to the benefit of our businesses and country. We know that in Ireland, we are at approximately 67% participation. We have a big gap that we can work towards closing. A key barrier to women and indeed some men returning to work is childcare and its cost. A second area that was highlighted more recently is the impact of the tax system on a second member of the family returning to work. While it is not directly under the remit of the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, it can work with other Departments to formulate a policy and strategy going forward to address this. We know that women coming through second and third level reach the highest standards of qualifications and do well with third level qualifications. We then lose many of them come childbearing age and they do not really make up the gap when they return to the workforce. It is much more difficult. Key areas that we need to look at are childcare and related supports, the tax system, maternity benefits and how that might be worked on. I would be interested to see what the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation is doing in that area. How is it working towards increasing the participation of women in the workforce?