Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair. I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on his new portfolio.

I digress for a minute - Deputy Stanton has left the room - regarding the possible development of the old Amgen site in Carrigtwohill. I would say that is still the cardiac pathway for emergency heart attack patients out of University Hospital Waterford. When that site was previously being discussed, and when IKEA was mentioned there, the issue of traffic disruption was brought up. All I would say is if it is Government policy to actively pursue that site, we had better actively pursue a 24-7 cardiac care service for the south east.

On TBESS, the Minister outlined €650 million allocated, 23,000 businesses applying and €26 million paid to date, and he is asking about the feedback. I can tell the Minister I have had plenty of representations from people trying to access TBESS. The first issue was the difficulty of the application. The people who had got money, I would say, in the main went to professionals and had it done for them. That is what I found. I met a girl last week who is employing 13 people in a bakery and she was nearly crying because she was going home that night to try and do an application. It was coming close to the close-out date and she was at her wit's end. She said that she was on it there for two days trying to access it. We have to take the bureaucracy out of these things. It seems - the Minister will not agree - to have been deliberately made difficult to slow down the applications to it. Plenty of SME companies at this stage have nearly written off being on it.

The Minister mentioned, under the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF, funding of €15.5 million. There are to be three technology streams - a needs-led innovation, a knowledge transfer boost and a fund for the technological universities - and yet the total quantum of funding is €15.5 million. For three programmes, including the new technological universities, TUs, in the country, that is not adequate to do anything. The former Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, last year, on its own would have taken in €22 million in research funding. I am not sure what that fund can achieve with that quantum of money. It seems incredibly small.

Under the disruptive technologies innovation fund, the Minister highlighted there is a significant tranche of money at €288 million. The Minister outlined that there are 86 collaborative projects involving 321 project partners. How many public sector organisations were involved in applying for that money? I think the Minister included a note that a number of our regulatory agencies were accessing money. It is not a criticism. I am only wondering how much of that is made up of public sector applications as opposed to private SME partnership. Those are my main queries.

I will ask two other questions, if I may. The Digital Services Act, the Minister highlighted, is obviously EU law to combat the proliferation of illegal content online. We are essentially now appointing a co-ordinator later this year, as part of that, to be up and running. Will moderation be a part of that? In other words, will there be some kind of censoring? Is there any sense that the amount of targeting of people, not only in the public domain but in general, and the abusive stuff on the Internet, will come under the remit of this organisation? Will they have any moderation?

I would have brought the following issue up with the Taoiseach, previously, when he was Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I have asked on a number of occasions that Irish Small and Medium Enterprise, ISME, Association be included in the labour employer economic form, LEEF, simply because of the number of firms that it represents and every time the go-to answer is that IBEC is there and IBEC includes the Small Firms Association. We need a separate SME representative community on LEEF, not a subordinate to IBEC, with all due respects. I would ask the Minister to try and see if we can get that done, particularly in light of where the economy is going and the difficulties now for small business SMEs. It is great the foreign direct investment sector and large pharmaceutical sectors are doing so well and that corporation tax receipts are so buoyant but those in the smaller SME sector need to be represent. Deputy Paul Murphy spoke earlier about expanding collective bargaining and I would have a significant concern how that might affect people employing one or two people, such as newsagents, shops, small retailers and small manufacturers. The voices of those people have to be heard and ISME is the best platform to do that. I would ask the Minister to try and see if we can get ISME included within the LEEF.