Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I will make sure what he said at the start of his contribution is passed on to Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and my departmental officials as well. To answer his first question on how we enable SMEs to make high-quality changes in the way the big firms do, we are very aware that the smaller firms will need additional help to make the changes that need to be made. As part of the European recovery fund, we secured multi-annual funding for a digital transformation fund and a climate transition fund. We have not fully decided how we are going to use all of that. The money we have is not enormous, but we think it will help to prompt businesses to make the right changes to digitalise and also to embrace climate action, including the circular economy. The climate transition fund has two parts now. There is a climate enterprise action fund and a climate carbon reduction fund. It is about awareness and doing climate audits and teaching businesses sustainable practices. The climate reduction fund is more for capital investment and measures such as heat pumps, for example, capital investment that help to improve the carbon footprint of companies. I anticipate that there will be another future growth loan guarantee scheme, which was really popular. While we do not have sanction for it yet, we have an understanding at government level that we will be able to develop a new loan product this year and there will be a very strong focus on climate and digital with regard to that.

Other schemes include those provided by LEOs, green for micro, and lean for micro and funds that are used to help businesses to take climate action and also to digitalise as well. When it comes to the circular economy, that is probably something that my Department and I need to take a bit more interest in this year. I started to learn about it in recent months. I was in the centre in Ballymun last year to see what they do there. I dipped into it myself by getting two pairs of runners that I was going to throw out renovated. They are great. They look like they are new although they are seven years old. In the past I would have thrown them out and bought a new pair but instead I got them renovated by an Irish small business for approximately €60 instead of buying a new pair.

I was very impressed with that. Fashion is just one small area, but we buy so much fashion imported from abroad and then discard it. Let us think about the number of Irish jobs that could be created by people repairing, reusing and renovating clothes, suits, footwear and so forth. It is only a small part of the circular economy but there are big opportunities to create employment in this area. It is something I will have to pay more attention to this year. Separately, the Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications is drafting legislation on this. I am not sure exactly how that is going to work but there is legislation due on the circular economy.