Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their presentation. It is worth recalling the role that Irish enterprise winning new markets played in our recovery from the last crash and indeed the role that start-ups played. Start-ups in Ireland created 100,000 jobs in that very difficult period, without which we would have had a much deeper crash. The work that Enterprise Ireland does is extremely important. We have proven the adaptability of the Irish-owned enterprise base.

Brexit has almost vanished as a topic, however, the UK market is running into serious decline. They are talking about some British regions declining already by 1.2%. Next year, that is likely to go nationwide. What is our dependence now on the UK market and to what extent are we vulnerable? The consumer foods area was mentioned, which presumably is very crucial.

Do the witnesses have lead indicators that would give Government and indeed the Oireachtas a heads up on how some of these headwinds, as they were described, are evolving so that we get a quicker understanding of where the pressures are coming from - for example, are they about losing market share or productivity problems? Can we respond to those?

I would be interested to hear what is happening in the start-up sector. Has it taken a bit of a hammering? In that context, Enterprise Ireland has pulled back on some of the competitive start options that used to be available. What is its approach to start-ups? At the other end, has it found that the small companies administrative rescue process, SCARP, has proven to be effective in some of its companies?

Finally, my last question goes back to what Deputy O’Reilly talked about. How seriously are companies taking sustainability changes? There is no doubt people are moving away from and are being conscious of energy. However, in terms of changing the types of materials, the sustainability of their supply chain, the packaging, the recoverability and reuse of materials, has that penny dropped? How far is Enterprise Ireland going in leading this? We are in the week of COP27 and the reality is that the western world generally has not made the sort of changes that we need to make. There is a need to embed what I would call circular economy thinking – our witnesses can call it what they would like. It is removing the environmental damage from our supply chains and that is still not embedded in the thinking of western economies. Where does Enterprise Ireland stand in embedding that?