Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy. We have had really positive engagement with SMEs over the last number of months. At the moment, we are devising our first ever national public procurement strategy. The prequel to that was making sure that we had all of the right feedback from all of the right sectors, so we launched an online survey and reached out to many businesses through their business representative organisations to encourage them to complete that and give us their feedback. We backed that up with interactive workshops in each of the regions. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, hosted one in Dublin. I hosted one in Athlone and one in Cork. They were fruitful and we had fantastic engagement with the businesses and some key buyers within public service, such as the HSE and ETBs. Engagement is absolutely happening and will continue to happen.