Ms Rowena Dwyer:

I thank the Senator for the questions. I will address some of the points raised and some others not so specifically. The key point she made relating to enabling infrastructure in terms of broadband and so on is critically important. Everyone here recognises that. One of Enterprise Ireland's roles is to sit on the National Competitiveness Council. It is our role to identify and to hear from our clients the issues that are outside our direct mandate and control but that are impacting on their ability to develop and so on. We influence and impact through that, and these are the type of issues that are very pertinent to our clients and to enterprises across the country.

On the disruptive technologies innovation fund, I do not have the exact breakdown but it is important to know that the criteria for that fund specifically required collaboration that included SMEs. It is a criteria that can and will be mirrored in other collaborative funding programmes into the future. That is critically important that what we see between large and small companies is the ability to maximise spillovers and allow SMEs to compete and be able to achieve growth in this area.

Regarding other areas, to go back to what was mentioned earlier about the skills needs and so on of enterprises, it is critically important that SMEs are supported, which is what we are doing through the Spotlight on Skills programme in identifying their skills needs and, following that, assisting them to engage and have a voice with education providers. When the Senator talks about curriculum it is that our education providers know the needs of our SMEs, not just those of larger companies, and that education providers in regional locations are responding to skills needs in that area in particular sectoral clusters.