Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

It is great that the Department is spending money, but we need to look forward as well. One area the Department might look at is companies' preparation of business plans. I am particularly thinking of applications for e-tenders and to Enterprise Ireland. It is very difficult to put applications for Enterprise Ireland together, particularly for small enterprises. They do get help with identifying market opportunities but they get very little support with the applications. It is left up to them to provide the information that provides the basis for evaluating whether they should be given grant aid. To a certain extent the same is true for e-tenders. The Department should provide local enterprise offices with funding to run mentoring or consulting courses to help. I am aware of many small businesses that have given up on tendering to local authorities. This includes moderately-sized builders who no longer submit e-tenders. They find it takes too much time and they have a poor success rate. This probably comes down to the way they fill out the applications. We should examine this, particularly in the context of European tenders.

The Tánaiste noted that the Covid restrictions support scheme provides an opportunity to warehouse tax. Corporation tax cannot be warehoused. For a lot of businesses, what they owe in corporation tax is cash on their balance sheet. If they have to pay it they may have cash flow difficulties. Looking into that would help businesses. At this late stage in the year a lot of firms have corporation tax bills to pay. They could certainly benefit from holding onto that money for a little while.

The Tánaiste stated, in the context of the Covid restrictions support scheme, that we cannot open up to everything. I wrote to the Minister on a related matter recently. He responded but I did not get an answer to my question, which concerned greeting cards. Greeting cards are relevant to mental health. They represent the ability to convey good wishes and let people know that significant dates have been remembered. Retailers are not supposed to sell them at the moment because customers tend to peruse them before buying. I have seen them on display in the front of garages. I do not think that is a bad idea. Can we re-examine this? Wales has already done so and allows people to sell greeting cards. A large percentage of our older population are not good with technology. They are not online. They may or may not use smartphones but they are used to writing a message on a greeting card and sending it.