Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair, and I thank the Minister and the officials for attending. I am under a little bit of pressure as I will be speaking in the House shortly. I thank the officials for coming here. I did not realise that there were so many - eight officials. It is very impressive. On that point, the Minister has covered a huge brief here today. I would welcome at some point engaging with some of his Department officials, and perhaps some of my colleagues would, to look at other issues we are not going to get to talk to today.

On the flooding issue, which was raised by my committee colleague, and he was very passionate about it, he did not mention any businesses in Waterford. There were businesses in Clashmore and Tallow that were also affected by the flooding. For the record, in excess of €7 million worth of damage was done to roads and infrastructure in west Waterford and the local authority has not at this point, as far as I know, received any additional capital moneys to remediate that. Perhaps the Minister might have a look at that.

The Department is one of the most important in the country simply because if we do not have enterprise, we do not have any revenue to support our public services and our population. A wide brief, as I have said, has been covered by the Minister and I look forward, perhaps, to a departmental briefing with senior officials.

I will touch on a couple of areas, one of which is SME supports. I will not go into that today except to say we in the Regional Group are bringing a motion next week to the Dáil on the SME community and what is happening in particular in the restaurant and hospitality sector.

I will speak for a minute on collective bargaining. I brought up in this forum last week what I would describe as the isolation of small businesses from the collective bargaining process.

It has been becoming more pertinent, particularly as the landscape is changing in terms of the employees of larger SMEs and large foreign direct investment, FDI, versus those that work out in the regions in the SME space. I have asked this question before and I want to put it on the record here again despite communication I have received from Taoiseach. Why can we not have ISME represented on the high-level governing body of the LEEF so that small business is absolutely represented? I do not take the view that the Small Firms Association, a subset of IBEC, is totally independent in terms of that point. Nor is Chambers Ireland. The voice of small business needs to be heard at the highest level in the LEEF.

I asked the Taoiseach, when he held the Minister's brief earlier in the lifetime of the Government, why a south-eastern development commission could not be established. The same is being done in other regions in order to try to provide cohesive, strategic policy analysis and access to high-level governmental applied research, reviewing and lobbying.

The other point I have made - and I will make it again - is that we need an SME development agency. We have one for exporters, one for indigenous SMEs that are exporting and one for FDI and we do not have one for SME development. I do not take the view, despite the great work they are doing, that the local enterprise offices, LEOs, fit into that groove completely.

Another matter that the Minister touched on briefly - we do not have time to go into it here - is FDI supports. In the south-east region - I am sorry for doing it, but I have to represent my region - the South East Technological University project has not moved one tangible inch, realistically, in terms of bringing the benefits the Minister said it would bring. There has been no extension to the borrowing framework, no change to the lecturers' contracts, no new courses or facilities announced, no funding for student accommodation and no funding for any capital development. An engineering building has been promised since 2011 - it has still not been approved - under a public private partnership, PPP, arrangement. Of all of these , the key one is the borrowing framework. If this technological university cannot borrow, it cannot advance. No exception is being made whatsoever in the programme for Government for the fact that the south east has no university to fall back on. This is it, and it is not working for us.

On research and innovation, I will be contributing to the Second Stage debate of a Bill that will be before the House later. It appears that there is significant bias in that legislation in terms of looking for high-level research to be the preserve of the PhD area. That will tend to exclude the technological gateways. I will be speaking on that matter in the House later, but it is something I would like to highlight here. I am of the view that there is a problem in this area.

There are two other issues I wish to raise. The Minister referenced modular home development and the new innovation centre in Offaly. I brought to the attention of the Department two modular home development companies that were trying to access fast-track standardisation. They have both left the market here. They have had enough and they are gone. They saw it as too difficult. They have approved products that are being sold across Europe and America, yet we have to walk them through a process that is going to take them between 12 and 18 months to get their products approved. That is totally unacceptable, particularly if we are serious about the housing crisis.

On offshore wind industrial policy, we are waiting for a hydrogen strategy to be announced. I have not seen it. I note that a designated area maritime plan for the south-east region seems to have been agreed by the climate Department. It is to be published very shortly. It would appear that a lot of that is going to put fixed-bottom wind turbines probably within 4 miles of the Copper Coast. I certainly would have a problem with that. I am asking that this be looked at seriously before we go ahead and publish the strategy.