Mr. Ian Talbot:

I could not agree more with the Deputy about the success this economy has had in the last few years and how we have so well recovered from the various shocks, including the recovery in unemployment levels both after the financial crisis, as well as Brexit and Covid. There are other forums and we have spoken at other Oireachtas committees where we have brought that up. The focus today was the impact for small businesses as much as the economy as a whole. That drove what we are talking about today to really focus on the challenges for small businesses. Yes, as an economy we are doing extraordinarily well. We have 2.57 million in employment now. When the Deputy and I both started our careers there was probably a workforce of about 1 million people. We are heading for treble that and it is an extraordinary change in that time but there are still the challenges that we wanted to address today in the limited time available to us. I will pass over to my colleague, Mr. Conneely, to talk through the Deputy's specific questions around planning and the impact of the skills challenge we have.

I should also say that I am a director of Skillnet Ireland. It is obviously doing a great job but there are other challenges.