Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Every Department has had to deal with constrained resources. It is one of the facts of post-crisis Ireland and every Department has had to ensure that it delivers but had to do more with less. Against the backdrop of the objectives we set ourselves, which the Secretary General read out, we have delivered very strongly with diminishing resources on championing enterprise and seeking to make this a good business environment. We have gone up in all the rankings for ease of doing business, recorded by the World Bank and the various competitiveness bodies and even the National Competitiveness Council has recorded very significant improvements in key areas.

There is also a strong resurgence in start-ups. Many of the policies we have pursued, such as the establishment of the local enterprise offices, LEOs, have helped deliver that. Our most recent initiative was the Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition, which was massively oversubscribed. More than 1,000 young entrepreneurs applied and we announced the winner last week. This resurgence is due in no small part to the efforts of the Department.

The harmonised competitiveness index has improved and for access to finance we have put out a large number of new non-bank financial sources that were not there before, some administered through our Department such as the micro-finance, the loan guarantee, the development capital fund, the seed and venture capital funds and the innovation funds. They have shown significant take-up and impact in filling what all Members recognise as a gap in access to finance. Most recently the Strategic Bank Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, is being developed and the National Pensions Reserve Fund, NPRF, has put money into that.

The Industrial Development Authority, IDA, has had a record performance in each of the past three years, each one better than the one before, the best in over a decade. We have protected the IDA from any diminution in resources. Even though we have cut staff numbers we have protected the IDA because in the teeth of the crash we believed that winning new external investment was an absolute priority.

On the other front, Enterprise Ireland had a record year last year. It has battled back from a tougher environment.

Enterprise Ireland companies hit their target for 2015 exports in 2013. They well exceeded the targets set by the previous Government and are now setting themselves more ambitious targets. IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland will be publishing their strategies for the coming years within the next month or two, in which they will set out their ambition to continue this high level of performance and address some of the issues that the committees have frequently raised around regional enterprise.

In terms of regulation, we have undertaken a lot of rationalisation to deliver, as stated by the Secretary General, more effectively in a constrained environment. There has been a number of elements to this, including the merger of the Competition Authority with the National Consumer Agency into a single market focused agency and the reorganisation, by way of legislation currently before the Houses, of the five employment rights bodies to create a single first point of access and a single appellant body. The performance of those bodies is already showing great improvement.

In regard to work permits for Irish based and overseas companies, for which there is considerable demand, the legislation in this regard has been rationalised to ensure more efficient procedures and delivery of the current service in a much more effective manner. A major amendment to our company law structure was recently passed, in respect of which I thank committee members for their support. As a result of this more streamlined legislation it is now easier for businesses to understand their obligations to comply in terms of the management of their businesses.

Our objective throughout all of this is to maintain the highest standards in terms of observation of competition law, observation of employment rights, observation of health and safety standards and so on, while at the same time creating a back office that is more efficient and allows us to deliver in these areas with fewer resources. Much of the same has been done in the area of innovation. Members will be aware of the research prioritisation exercise which examined how our resource budget was being deployed. We sought to focus in that exercise on areas where we could sustain a long-term competitive advantage while having world-class science. We are delivering that reprioritisation of our resources. A measure of this is that all of our science budget allocation now requires a 30% non-Exchequer element as standard. In other words, companies must show they can leverage additional resources to those that we put in.

On developing sectors, we have looked hard at what sectors have a long term and sustainable future and have sought to create an environment within which we can build on them. We have looked at sectors such as the big data initiative, innovation health hub and so on where we can grow long-term competitive advantage and have sought to deploy our resources within those sectors. In terms of resourcing, there will always be a need for more resources and more things we could do if allocated more. To be fair to Government colleagues, they have recognised the importance of enterprise and employment and while we have suffered constraints on the manpower side, we have been able to maintain our capital budgets, which most other Departments were not permitted to do. This has allowed us to support the type of employment expansion we are enjoying. We are determined to continue to support this area. This relates to our central mission, which is a balanced mission that puts employment at the heart of what we do but in enterprises that work in sustainable ways to high standards, protecting employment rights and environmental standards and observing competition and health and safety. That is our mandate. I hope that we are delivering it effectively.