Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegations for coming in. It is great to get a broad outline of where we are probably going and the steps the Government has been taking to try to look at providing investment in the broad economic sector.

I am somebody who has experience. I was involved in two health business services. The first thing I would say is that it is incredibly difficult to build any business, even an SME business, but to take it beyond you need to have so many competitive factors and be able to sustain them to grow and to scale. Among the difficulties which have been highlighted in terms of the start documents are our taxation regime, the supports, and that how we deal with entrepreneurs does not really help. When you develop a business idea and get it to a certain point, there is the valley of death, as it is called, and the risk is the ability to scale, to take on investment partners, to be able to defend your markets, to be able to continue to be innovative and to protect your intellectual property, IP. These are all the problems and what happens is, investors, particularly the early stage people and oftentimes the entrepreneurs, will take the position, as the witnesses know, either to join forces and merge, where they will be diluted, essentially, although they hope they will get something out of it, or they sell. We have this problem in Ireland of sale or scale. I know the Department of Finance, and probably even the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, have not treated entrepreneurs properly in this country over the years in terms of supporting them at the very early stage and providing them with the expertise to allow them survive long enough in the marketplace to gain traction and go.

I am engaging with two companies that have a very good opportunity to go into international markets. The opportunities exist but the difficulties are immense in terms of time, money and expertise. One of these companies needs significant expertise to try to get into the retail markets across Europe, and the question is who can provide it with that. We are trying to find those people in Ireland and that is very difficult. That is just one simple area where we could help people.

I have a particular interest in ISIF and its team because it is potentially taking investments in Waterford allied to the new South East Technological University.

We obviously want to see that happen but there has been talk of it and the position on the funding for two years. It is hard to get Government delivery on these things. These issues need to be broadcast and it needs to be shown how the ecosystem can be developed.

Could I go back to the start? Based on what the reports have stated about the significant proposals being made, could the representatives speak about the release they are advocating for entrepreneurs?