Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)

I will go back to the question of protecting jobs. This was my first budget, so I did not really know what to expect going into the Chamber. I was given a big pack with different things, and one of them was a budget in brief document. One of the interesting things in it was that it projected an increase in unemployment. Those are the Government's own figures on its own budget day. I am not sure it actually is protecting jobs. I genuinely welcome the capital investment. I think that €19.72 billion is not quite the 20% of GDP that Ardnacrusha was, but it is nearly there. That is welcome and is the level of ambition required. However, the other thing not mentioned in the document and the speeches by the Minister for Finance or the Minister for public expenditure and reform was affordable housing. My fear is that, if the capital investment is disproportionately invested in a speculative housing model, it will actually drive wage pressures for the witnesses' members. That does not solve a lot of the major problems that businesses are experiencing with employees.

I will end with two questions. The skills training question is a really important one. I want to turn the last bit of my contribution to the question of the future of Irish business. What does that look like? I hope multinationals will be a part of that mix long into the future, but we need to focus on the indigenous economy and growing the indigenous companies we have. I am a little concerned by the statement made about the difference between supply-driven and demand-driven skills. I would like a sense of how much interaction the organisations' members have with universities and the third level sector in crafting curricula. How do they think about that throughput? Due to the CAO system, the way the funding of the universities occurs is, unfortunately, demand driven.

My second question is about access to finance. When you think about the domestic economy, which is an area this committee needs to go into further, there are banks, non-bank lending, equity investors, retail equity investors, non-retail funds and all of that kind of thing. Outside of the tax and the paperwork, what are the kinds of thing witnesses see that would improve access to finance for business in Ireland?