Mr. Ian Talbot:

It is as much about awareness of the programmes as it is about any specific programmes. Some of this goes back to Deputy Smith's comments. People are involved in every process. Intentions are always very good but delivery is very different. We find that we now have all these new structures in local authorities but there are 31 local authorities and each of the enterprise offices operates quite differently. It is a known thing that people are working on. Having more structures coming from the top are in place that help people get a similar delivery is really important across apprenticeships as well as the enterprise environment. During Covid and subsequently, some of the grant aid was begging to be taken up by companies yet there is a real issue getting companies to take up things like the rent rebate scheme. It is a real challenge getting companies to engage with it. Too often, people saw it as too difficult and said it took ages when they previously filled in a grant form. There are a lot of preconceived ideas. There are people in every system and the more we can give people structure and awareness, the better it will be. We are trying to point to areas where if we got everyone together on the same page, we would make a lot of progress. That is really important. We all beat our heads off a brick wall about how best to get information to our members in a format they will take in and read, whether it be about energy grants from SEAI or apprenticeship programmes. People are time poor so how we get that message to them is really important.

We all represent blocks of businesses and have overlapping members, who have been members of IBEC for one reason or members of chambers for their geographic presence. There is a big cohort of employers that are not really engaged with anything and how we reach them is important as well. It is very hard for us to reach some of those.