Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I can give a few highlights. We have a significant Vote in the Department this year. We have taken in responsibility for tourism, which is a significant change. It is important to have the Department of tourism at the heart of the Department of enterprise because it gives huge opportunities to our SME sector to absorb the huge capacity and challenge we have in upskilling many businesses.

Members will be familiar with the IDA Ireland investment. We got our mid-term results last week in which we saw a 37% increase in investments won by the agency, which is significant. On sustaining jobs, we are at approximately 302,000, which is 11% of the labour force and that has been static for the past few years. There is a big challenge in maintaining it and attracting new investment.

Our indigenous sector is also performing quite strongly. Enterprise Ireland published its results for 2024 in the past ten days as well. We saw approximately €36.75 billion of exports, which is up 6%. It is a strong performance from the sector and we are on target to realise the five-year strategy, which hopes to get our exports up to €50 billion with approximately 275,000 employees or €2.2 billion already in that expenditure and 1,000 new start-ups.

We also saw the metrics for start-ups last week, which have been strong. They are on an upward trajectory and a lot of exciting things are happening in that space, which speaks well for the enterprise economy. I have worked hard to do things more simply and lightly and faster. That has been the trajectory of the Department. We have a cost of business advisory forum where all the stakeholders and regulatory agencies are under one roof trying to make progress in that sector. It will look at the interoperability of regulators with one another and how they engage with the SME sector.

We also established a small business unit in the Department of enterprise, which is now up and running and will be supporting the sector, trying to ensure we have reasonable conditions attached to the supports we offer. We are trying to get the enterprise sector to embark on digitisation and sustainability programmes, which will be two key tenets of the SME and indigenous economy into the future.

I have highlighted a few snapshots.