Mr. Breanndán Casey:

As I am speaking on the regional enterprise side, I am conscious that some of my submission is very much from a national perspective. I am going to skip over some parts. Listening to my colleagues from Donegal and Galway, we might think there are differences but there are a lot of similarities as well.

The Mill Enterprise Hub is based in Drogheda, County Louth, the largest town in Ireland. We are not considered a rural town and should not be but we have the same issues when it comes to living and working. It is not sustainable for Drogheda to be a commuter town. Towns right around the Dublin region are blighted by commuting. It affects business and the quality of life in communities if people are coming home at half past seven, eight or nine o'clock at night and are stuck in traffic for an hour and a half each way every day. Productivity levels go down. I am going to focus on the commuter region even though Drogheda would be considered to be in the north-east region.

The Mill Enterprise Hub was set up five years ago. We are a registered charity with a board of voluntary directors. We had support from Enterprise Ireland, the local enterprise office and Louth County Council. We currently have over 30 companies based with us, with 83 employees. The vast majority are micro-enterprises, one or two-person operations. We also have emergent foreign direct investment companies. According to the 2016 census, Drogheda has the largest population of any town in Ireland at just over 40,000. Until the Mill Enterprise Hub was created, there was no viable enterprise centre in Drogheda. We have a long history of industry but we wanted to upskill and target more digital-oriented companies. We have been very successful in that. Drogheda is about 50 km north of Dublin. There is still a lot of confusion about where we are based as people tend to confuse Drogheda and Dundalk. We feel we can emulate other cities and become a focal point for entrepreneurship in the region. The three largest towns in Ireland, Dundalk, Navan and Drogheda, are all in close proximity to each other. We all suffer from the same issues in respect of brain drain going in to Dublin every day. It is critical that we counteract that and the Mill Enterprise Hub has done so with various programmes.

Over the last four or five years we have developed a range of programmes. We have pushed for the M1 payments corridor, which was in the North East Action Plan for Jobs, which aims to develop a FinTech hub in the north east right across Louth, Meath, Cavan and Monaghan. We have had the Illuminate female entrepreneurship programme, in which we partnered with DCU's Ryan Academy. We had a Drogheda young innovators programme and have worked on a start-up gathering with Enterprise Ireland.

I also want to compliment some of the existing supports, hubs and start-ups. There has been a very strong support for start-ups over the past few years.

We work closely with Dundalk IT, DCU, the Guinness Enterprise Centre and the National Association of Community Enterprise Centres. There is a willingness to support each other. Even within the small area of County Louth, under the Louth economic forum we have been strong on having the key enterprise centres working with each other to make sure we are not duplicating each other's activity.

I want to go through some of the challenges, quite a few of which deal with funding and are national challenges and not unique to Drogheda or the commuter towns of the north east. We have more familiarity with Brexit issues due to our proximity to the Border. Access to funding is still the major issue. SMEs still have a great deal of difficulty with the banks. We have come across a few companies, across all regions, that have had issues accessing funding under the employment incentive initiative, which is taking too long, with no guarantee at the end that funding will be approved. On the start-up tax relief for entrepreneurs, SURE, again, companies have had issues in applying and due to the criteria being too restrictive. In most cases, they have failed to secure the funding. Cash flow assumptions are a massive issue that was dealt with at a previous committee session. When it comes to cash flow and cash being king, SMEs still have a poor understanding of this and we would like more support for companies.

With regard to management skills in regard to recruiting and retaining employees, a point raised by colleagues from the Western Development Commission, one of the issues is that SMEs have to compete with larger companies, which is not easy. Since we made our submission, there has been some change to the key employee engagement programme, KEEP, in the recent budget but it is still an issue. Visas have also been an issue, not just for FDI companies but also for SMEs. Where a company is looking for visas for key overseas workers, it is taking too long to get them.

One of the questions was about poor communications with State agencies. In our experience, and we work with Louth and Meath LEOs, which have representatives on our board, SMEs that engage with the enterprise support agencies get support, whether that is financial or advisory, but there is still a lack of knowledge on who to go to and when to go to them. There is still a perception that companies will be sent to the wrong person or that the application processes are too long. This leaves an opportunity for the community enterprise centres. I mentioned the National Association of Community Enterprise Centres. Many of the regions have strong community enterprise centres and there is an opportunity for them to take on more responsibility. In the past, some community enterprise centres did not receive funding grants from Enterprise Ireland for key staff, which will be crucial going forward.

On commuter issues, I agree with Senator Ó Céidigh that the cities cannot take all the business and there is a need to prioritise regionalisation. However, I urge the committee not to group all the east cost counties together. The issues in Wicklow, Kildare and Louth are different from those in Dublin, although, much of the time, my colleagues in those counties see the focus moving to the west or the north. If we want to develop sustainable communities, there has to be the right work-life balance.

The 2016 census showed that 200,000 commuters spend an hour or more commuting, an increase of 50,000 since 2011. In Laytown-Bettystown, an area close to Drogheda, 28% of the workforce is commuting more than 60 minutes every day while it is 42% in Skerries, 28% in Naas, and 36% in Balbriggan. This is clogging up the systems and is bad for the environment and productivity. It is bad for Dublin-based businesses that people are stuck in traffic, as well as being demotivational for staff. A more proactive approach to some of the commuter towns is needed. While the unemployment rate may be lower than in some rural towns, which is great, in the long run this is detrimental to society and to developing proper communities.

As a solution, we suggest the reverse commute, which is probably not too dissimilar to the WDC's LookWest scheme. This concerns the promotion of activities and programmes across the region, whether in Louth, Meath, Kildare or Wicklow. There is probably a little bit of fear in SMEs and start-ups that they will not get the supports if they are outside the city. That is the crucial part.

I have a couple of other issues. The question of suitable office accommodation was raised.