Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to return to the issues that I raised about this idea of a third way and a regulatory agency. I accept what Mr. Hegarty said about LEOs existing to help the SME community.

The LEOs do an excellent job. I have great awareness of the work that they do and their approach but I do not think that the SME community, as a group, is properly represented. Certainly, in terms of collective bargaining and all that, SMEs are outside the loop. I have previously asked for ISME to be brought on to the LEEF but there is resistance to doing so by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I am not quite sure why the Department keeps going back to the Small Firms Association but it is a subset of IBEC. I think that it is very difficult to see how you can have an organisation that deals with the largest multinationals in the country and is also supposed to be dealing for the mom and pop shop. Again, I put this issue to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, at the last committee meeting that he attended and he said that it was something that would be looked at. I think that it needs to be looked at because we need a better framework for all of the SME community. There is between 20,000 and 25,000 SME businesses that fall between stools in terms of EI, IDA Ireland and LEOs.

I wish to discuss clustering. One of the ways that clustering can be well achieved is through the technology gateways that we have in the third level academic space. Waterford has three of the top 15 scientific gateways and, essentially, they are the south east applied materials scene, which is probably well known by the Department. I refer to the PMBRC, which deals with molecular technology. We also have the Walton Institute. These entities are leading scientific development in this country yet, in terms of funding, I have been totally frustrated in terms of trying to see Science Foundation Ireland grant aid going into those organisations.

Under the new framework of the South East Technological University, we have a very proactive new president appointed who wants to get deeper relationships going between local industry and the third level sector. One of the issues is that the funding is not catching up to provide the research capital and frameworks to develop that. Therefore, we need a strategy for this aspect. We need to recognise that we have these really high functioning, strategic and innovative centres that can coalesce and co-ordinate with the foreign direct investment, FDI, sector, of which we have a decent footprint in the south east but they need to be given the ability to do the job that they can do. I ask that the Department liaises with the SFI and looks at this matter because funding is not coming through. Since 2018, I have advocated for funding for a specific CT X-ray system of metal analysis for the South Eastern Applied Materials Research Centre, SEAM, gateway. That was only announced less than two months ago, four years after it was approved. The funding is not that large at a couple of million euro in the overall scheme and the money that we are spending in this sector. I ask Mr. Hegarty to examine the matter.

That is where there is great scope to develop closer, deeper integration, innovation and scientific research, and then try to see, through the LEOs, what other smaller companies might be there that could supply some products to those larger FDI concerns.