Ms Kerry Curran:

The Deputy is right. As for the businesses planning for Brexit through the all-island business monitor, the numbers have not come down very quickly. Part of the reason for that is because the businesses on which we are focusing on the island of Ireland are SMEs. Consequently, many of them are very small companies that only have a certain amount of resources for planning. The larger companies with which IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland deals will have more resources behind them to support that planning process. The supply chain linkages report shows clearly the nature of the integrated supply chain on the island of Ireland and how closely Ireland and Northern Ireland are tied in terms of delivering those component parts for businesses. As for whether that will be a wake-up call for companies, we do not anticipate a big wake-up call for companies. What we hope to do is to get out and speak to businesses directly. That is where the value is in changing those numbers around and getting more than that 8% of cross-Border traders to plan for Brexit by sharing with them how they plan for Brexit and giving them advice through the Start to Plan vouchers that will really help change that. That is where much of our effort will be focused during 2018. My colleague will share some of that in a moment.

It will be a period of time before we see SMEs really getting past that uncertainty. The good news we are starting to see through the business monitor is that businesses are doing far more informal planning. They are having internal meetings. Just over a third of businesses trading across the Border we surveyed in the most recent business monitor said that they had at least met internally as an organisation and discussed Brexit and that is new. That is moving forward. We are seeing more of them meet their peer organisations and support organisations to get more information for Brexit. They are contacting organisations such as ourselves for advice and are using the Brexit advice vouchers for that. We are seeing a positive sign of that informal planning improving. When we think about the proportion of businesses that actually have a formal business plan, maybe that is good enough for now as we try to work out exactly what is going to happen around Brexit. We are starting to see enough positive signs. I will pass over to Mr. Skerritt who will discuss the plans around developing the Start to Plan voucher and its reach because plenty is under way there.