Mr. Leo Clancy:

There is a lot there. In respect of the Senator's point about the circular economy and how we support clients in that regard, I have been part of a number of conversations directly with clients where we have spoken about innovation support we can offer directly through research innovation grants. Mr. McElwee mentioned agile research and development earlier so that is certainly a support we can use. If a company is looking at changing its packaging format and needs some additional help or incentive to make that happen, that is somewhere we support.

We also support innovation partnerships, which is work that can be placed with the university. I mentioned UCD and its focus on the circular economy earlier. If a company finds an academic it can work with in a university setting, we will provide very substantial grants for the work that can be placed with those in order to achieve that outcome for them. There are a number of areas like that.

The other thing mentioned by the Senator was the elimination of waste. We spoke about the Lean For Micro scheme. We also operate the LeanStart, LeanPlus and LeanTransform programmes. These programmes are very focused on productivity but the essence of productivity is that you cut waste out of your business be that time waste of employees or, more specifically, material waste. That is possibly a precursor to the circular economy. It involves avoiding the creation of a product that needs to be recycled in the end. Those are two of the key areas where we support the circular economy. It involves avoiding the creation of waste and excess packaging and other things being created in the first place and supporting companies with changing their methodology. A recent conversation I had involved changing from a non-recyclable pack to a recyclable one. This is an area where we would look at providing innovation support directly to the company as well as what could be provided by universities.

I agree with the Senator's point regarding freight and the carbon footprint abroad. It works both ways. In the context of the Senator's point and that of Deputy Paul Murphy, Ireland's increasing move towards a renewably powered economy provides us with significant opportunities to be greener in this space. If we are an economy that will have significant amounts of our industry fuelled by wind and possibly by green hydrogen over time, we have an opportunity to be that country that even with any transport emissions still has a greener product produced here than somewhere that might be relying on coal-fired stations elsewhere so there are significant opportunities for us in that space. The Senator's overall points are very welcome. I know she started with the small and micro enterprise side. I might hand over to Mr. McElwee to comment on that.