Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 5 November 2019

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Finance Bill 2019: Committee Stage

Photo of Paschal DonohoePaschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have not introduced the process the Deputy has described that takes place in Northern Ireland. We have tried to make a number of changes to make it easier for these smaller companies to apply for the changes we are making, but the broader changes to which the Deputy referred a year ago are not part of this in terms of the application process. Of course, if I had said "Yes", God knows what trouble I could have got into with the Acting Chairman, but that is not the reason we have not done it.

To address the Deputy's broad point, in recent days the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, published an OECD survey on entrepreneurship in smaller companies in our economy. I am sure the Deputy is aware of it. It points to two issues of concern to me. The varying productivity levels in our economy are now becoming quite pronounced. We have many different companies at the very frontier of productivity, not only in Ireland but throughout the world, because of the nature of what they are doing. We have another cohort of companies that tend to be indigenous and smaller, and not only are they significantly behind the first group, as one would expect, they are behind the average. We are going to have to find a way to address this. I hope that what we are doing here will be part of the answer, although there are a number of measures we will need to continue and new measures we will need to take.

I want to see and encourage more and more of the people working in the very large companies at the frontier of productivity and new forms of technological development in Ireland setting up their own companies in Ireland. I am seeing encouraging signs of this happening, but we have a way to go. What is driving the changes that came out of the public consultations we did earlier in the year is trying to find new ways to provide smaller and micro companies with an opportunity to get at least some of the supports that tend to be associated only with the very largest companies.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.