Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have used the analogy before and I mentioned it earlier of flying on one large engine for relying on our standards of living. My first response is not to switch off that engine until the other one is firing strongly. That is how I would answer it in a colloquial sense. Inward investment will always be a major part of our economic model and it has been hugely successful in importing productivity into Ireland. It is the case that our productivity levels elsewhere in the economy among our domestic firms would be worse if we had not had the investment of those countries over the years and if those companies had not been provided with the incentives to do so. They do not need to be mutually exclusive. It will always be beneficial. All of the research suggests that having a strong, innovation-intensive sector that is highly skilled not only provides a valuable sector to corporate taxes and so on in itself but it also results in spillovers to the other companies as people move back and forth between large companies and small companies.

Dell was an interesting example of a company that went out of business eventually and was probably at the lower-skilled end yet it produced some fantastic people who have gone on to set up other companies. That sector is important, therefore, and it is important to support it. Nevertheless, the Deputy is correct that the other sector also needs to be supported strongly in being able to use some of these incentives, such as tax credits, to invest in innovation, research and design, talent and in-company training. There is much policy in this area, with Enterprise Ireland working hard to support that sector and send people on management training programmes to give them the types of information they need. In the case of Brexit, for example, they can be helped to develop the types of supply chains that might help to protect them from Brexit and to open new markets. There are many different schemes available to help them to do that. The one area I consider difficult is the large proportion of employment which is provided by companies with two or three people and which might not even be internationally traded. It is very hard to persuade those people, who work long hours to keep their business going, to take time off to think about their strategy, how they will retrain and so on. As a council, we continually examine models from elsewhere to show what could be done in that area but it remains a challenge and there is no easy answer.