Mr. Eoghan Richardson:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to contribute on the matter of SMEs in Ireland on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation. The Minister sends her apologies but she could not attend. The Department's supports for SMEs include access to finance, management development, mentoring supports, business development programmes, market supports and trade promotion, in addition to a range of impressive regulatory and oversight functions. The Minister stated in her speech following the budget that her three priories are Brexit, regional growth and innovation. We are supporting her goals and supporting SMEs. I would like to draw the committee's attention to the Department's work with the OECD on a country review of SME policies and issues which will result in a roadmap for SME policy and a subsequent SME strategy for Ireland. I would also ask the committee to note that this review has an entire section focused on reviewing the regional SME perspective. We will be in a position to share this report with the committee before summer 2019.

The attractiveness of the business environment for SMEs is measured in the European Commission's small business fact sheet. Since 2008, Ireland has made substantial progress in implementing the EU's Small Business Act policy roadmap. Ireland performs above or well above in eight of the nine principal areas, including entrepreneurship, responsive administration, public procurement, access to finance, Single Market skills and innovation.

To focus more on the regional perspective, since 2015 the regional action plan initiative has been a central pillar of the Government's ambition to create 200,000 jobs by 2020, with 135,000 of these being outside Dublin. There has been an increase in employment of almost 12% from quarter 1 of 2015 to quarter 2 of 2018. Three out of five of these jobs have been in regions outside Dublin. The plans are monitored and driven in each region by implementation committees made up of representatives of the private sector, local authorities and enterprise agencies, and are chaired by a senior industry representative. In April of this year, the Minister asked the regional action plan committees to lead a refresh and refocus of their action plans. This refresh is about introducing a more focused strategic and collaborative approach. The plans are intended to be completed by the end of 2018 and launched in early 2019.

Regional development and Brexit are significant components of Enterprise Ireland's SME supports. The Department, through Enterprise Ireland, has rolled out a €60 million regional enterprise development fund for new initiatives in the area of entrepreneurship, clustering, innovation hubs and other enterprise infrastructures to incubate and grow new start-ups and deliver new job creation projects.

To ensure a balanced regional spread, the Minister is committed to ensuring that each region will benefit by at least €2 million from the overall fund. Much like the committee's focus on bringing the spotlight on to SMEs, the Department has extensive engagement with SME stakeholders. We have increased our outreach events, such as Getting Ireland Brexit Ready and Taking Care of Business, where SMEs can find the supports available and, more important, talk to the people who operate these supports. We have a first-stop shop, an online tool at www.supportingsmes.ie, which is very useful.

The 31 LEOs provide a first point of contact to all enterprise related inquiries nationwide. The LEOs strive to create and maintain client centred business networks and assist in developing progression paths to Enterprise Ireland's high-potential start-ups and established industry departments. The LEOs also run the Irish Best Young Entrepreneur competition, which has a €2 million investment fund and helps young entrepreneurs turn their business ideas into reality. As was mentioned, finance is key for the development of all stages of business, be they start-ups, expanding or more mature SMEs. The developer is leading in conjunction with the wider government in providing a variety of financial supports to suit the needs of these SMEs. Some of these include the Brexit loan guarantee scheme, which was launched in March of this year with a fund of €300 million and operated by the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI. By the end of September 2018, 200 firms had made successful applications. Recently the Minister announced a longer term, €300 million future growth loan scheme for loans of up to ten years.

The credit guarantee scheme incurs additional lending to SMEs by offering a partial Government guarantee to banks against losses and qualifying loans and so far the sanctions have been facilitated to €93.9 million. On a smaller scale there is Microfinance Ireland, which is set up to provide loans to microenterprises that have been refused bank finance and as at the end of quarter 3 2018, they have lent €26.7 million to individuals, supporting more than 4,400 jobs. The Enterprise Ireland seed and venture capital scheme established to increase the availability of risk capital for SMEs and, as of 2018, it committed €510 million which has raised a total of €1.19 billion in seed and venture capital funding.

Ireland has a strong and burgeoning SME base, which compares well with the international counterparts in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation. Our business environment for them also compares favourably overall. There is room for improvement and we are aware of the issues that are raised here today. We welcome the committee shinning a light on indigenous SMEs. The Department will ensure that Ireland has the most competitive environment for starting, growing and scaling SMEs and I particularly thank Senator Ó Céidigh for his invitation to come before the committee.