Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I deal with small businesses all the time. My sister runs two of them. They are the backbone of north Clare, where I come from. In Clare, nearly all our jobs are in the small business sector. They feel too many workshops are being offered on mentoring. Many small businesses know what they need to do; they just need financial help. There are start-ups that need help and might not know what to do but there are businesses that have been operating for many years and are sick of being asked to come to events that are not of help to them. They see a lot of money being put into consultants, mentors and workshops that are not really relevant for businesses that want to go green and want to know if there are supports to help them.

Mr. Magee mentioned transport and cargo bikes. That is brilliant. Does he know how many of those we have in Clare? We have one business that has one cargo bike in the entire county. There should be loads of them in Shannon, Kilrush and Ennis but nobody is doing anything about them. The LEOs have never mentioned them. For the guy who has it, I helped to buy one. He did not get a grant for it at the time; now we have introduced a grant for cargo bikes. All these things are being said but they are not manifesting on the ground, with the best will in the world.

I do not know if it is the LEOs' fault or whose fault it is. The LEOs should step away completely from the local authorities and should not be embedded with them at all. I sometimes think the local authorities seem to be steering the LEOs and their priorities. Sometimes there is a small business that has only been in operation for one or two years, yet it is the one mentoring these businesses that have been there for 30 or 40 years because it is kind of trendy and cool. We need to get it right. There is a lot of expertise already in small businesses that are at this for a long time, and maybe they are the ones that need to be used more to engage with the businesses that are coming on board.