Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for the very interesting presentation. I have a few questions. Representatives from every enterprise agency which has appeared before the committee said that sustainability is the key to long-term competitiveness. However, it is simply not scaling. That is the reality. Small businesses are not taking up the offer. Even larger businesses are not taking up the EI and IDA schemes. If our model is not getting the level of engagement, what should we change within it? It seems the Business in the Community pledges get us so far. There are plastic and carbon pledges but they do not transfer to the vast majority of businesses. Maybe I have a bee in my bonnet, but I think sectoral is the way to go. We should take the food and construction sectors and make a concerted effort to establish circular principles in those sectors. That would pull in people, who currently spend a lot of their time bitching about someone else, or regulation or something or other, so they would all at least be sharing the problem to an extent. I am interested to hear the representatives' take on that.

The second issue relates to social enterprise. I am doing a bit of work on positive ageing through the Fine Gael policy lab.

It seems that the 25 years that most people can look forward to after they retire is simply not being tapped as an asset. There is massive wasted value and massive unmet needs, and a huge scope for pairing off some of that spare time, energy, commitment and interest to some of the unmet needs. However, we do not seem to have models to deliver it at scale. It was said we need a new legal framework for social enterprise, which was interesting. I would like to hear what that might be, particularly around the capacity to scale. There are some very good individual initiatives that just do not grow to any scale to match the vast challenge that positive ageing represents.

We have small business saying this reporting requirement is a heap of burden and it is beyond them. I can understand that but, on the other hand, without having some reporting requirement of this sort, how do we drive the purpose on? Do the witnesses have tips they would suggest as to how we might bridge this transition? One group says it is an unsupportable burden and another rightly says these are the purposes we have to square up to. Is it too inflexible? Is the ask from Europe too inflexible at this point or is it a good model? If it is a reasonable model, how do we kick life into it?