Mr. Ian Talbot:

I agree this is an issue. An issue also arises in that we are particularly reluctant in Ireland to hand over share ownership of family businesses.

It is kept very tight, which makes it very difficult for an investor. It part of the finance for small business debate also. I refer to banks that have a methodology for looking at attractive propositions to which to lend and lend 80% which would be the normal percentage. They will want to get the other 20% from an equity investor. The equity investor will say he or she would like a shareholding, but the typical Irish family oriented company will not want to give him or her a cut of the business. We have to move on that issue.

I am almost "committeed out" at this stage, but the small business finance committee established in recent weeks in the Department of Finance has set up a sub-group to specifically examine the issue of equity finance. I understand there is a draft initial report, which is a problem statement. Equity finance is a major issue in the problem statement and a body of work is needed by a variety of sources around education. It comes back to encouraging people to grow their businesses. There are scary figures available, which goes back to the Deputy's statement on an over-reliance on foreign direct investment. Approximately 93% of our exports are by FDI companies, which leaves 7% by Irish companies. We would like to see a more balanced economy and an increase in that figure. There is a big education issue in this regard. It is about educating and incentivising managers to grow their businesses rather than sell up and move on.

If we look at some of the modern entrepreneurs, they include many young individuals with hot shot ideas. They have the skills set and their brains are wired to get an idea to production, but they are not the ones to turn an organisation into a 500 person behemoth. They need to move on to their next good idea and let somebody else who is better at structuring and managing a scaled up to business take over. A balance must be achieved in that regard.

Much of it comes back to education in a modern economy. In recent years a good deal of the money for education of management has dried up. Approximately €350 million a year is collected by the national training fund from businesses and it is not going back into training.