Mr. Neil McDonnell:

That is an interesting concept. The Deputy may have seen our pre-budget submission. The IDA does an excellent job for foreign direct investment, FDI. Enterprise Ireland does an excellent job on behalf of high-performance start-ups and exporters. We see a gap in the market. We can consider the Irish business demography of approximately 275,000 businesses, of which approximately 600 are large. Most of those large businesses are IDA Ireland clients. They are non-national businesses. Enterprise Ireland is looking after the next tranche, down to approximately 3,000. In round numbers, there are a remaining 265,000 businesses, of which 130,000 are sole traders, including taxi drivers, solicitors, accountants and butchers. Our view is that the bit in the middle is not best served at the moment. In last year's White Paper on Enterprise, the Government stated that the local enterprise offices, LEOs, would no longer just look after microbusinesses, comprising fewer than ten employees, and would expand to include companies of up to 50 employees. There are issues around capacity in the LEO network to do that.

I am giving the Deputy a long answer. We would like an agency to look after SMEs and whether it is solely in the Republic or on the whole island is irrelevant to us. Our formal pitch to Government and to the Oireachtas is that SMEs that are not currently exporting or high-performance start-ups or in the tech industry are not best served by the current dispensation and we would like that to change. It is up to politicians to effect that.