Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in for this informative engagement. Much of what I was going to raise was brought up by my esteemed and learned colleagues so I will be short and sweet. I want to focus on a point that has been raised by a number of speakers and that is green finance. One of the issues facing many businesses is the need to decarbonise. There is a particular catchment of businesses such as mom-and-pop shops and the small SMEs that are at sea in this area. If one looks at firms that are associated with Enterprise Ireland, EI, IBEC and IDA Ireland, they are probably decades ahead in this challenge but there is another large cohort of businesses. We repeatedly remind the public that the engine room and driving force of rural Ireland is SMEs and they feel isolated. I am conscious that there may be some direction for them in tomorrow's announcement but we need to see a specific green energy finance programme for them. We saw a good initiative from the credit unions last week on finance for private home-owners to future-proof their homes but there is nothing in that space yet for the SMEs.

We all appreciate and know that the finance market has contracted significantly and that is a challenge. Deputy Bruton also mentioned the circular economy and for rural Ireland in particular there is a huge opportunity in this. We are seeing some progress in this area such as the EDI centre in Longford, for example, which is doing excellent work but it is still too hard for smaller businesses to get proactively involved in this area. If one looks at the big retailers one can see that there are opportunities for small businesses to grow on the back of a circular economy. On efficiency and businesses moving forward, those are the two key opportunities for SMEs if we could give them advice. As Mr. Gilvarry rightly says, there may be an outline of that in tomorrow's announcement. We need green finance and a clear pathway forward for the circular economy. I would welcome any observations on those points that have not already been given.