Mr. Neil McDonnell:

My view is similar to that. I will just qualify that I know what Mr. McKeever is saying. I am not disputing what he has to say on the export front, but sometimes we can be very dismissive of old tech, yet we can get innovative, disruptive businesses coming out of that. The bed and breakfast accommodation sector is almost clichéd in Ireland now after a couple of decades, but Airbnb actually grew out of accommodation finding. The taxi trade would have been seen as very old tech, yet it spawned Uber and all sorts of things like that. Therefore, there are disruptive people who will come into a business model. That is not often pleasant for many incumbents who are in there and do not like it. To very simply say what we think is missing from that, however, I echo the comments about Enterprise Ireland. A refrain I hear all the time is that we want our own Ms Julie Sinnamon, Enterprise Ireland and Mr. Leo Clancy. I know what the Government is trying to do with the local enterprise office, LEO, network. That is a very new policy. Whether that will work, I do not know. I really hope it does. Enterprise Ireland is set up, however. It has the corporate nous and experience. I would agree with Simon; we need to start getting that knowledge base down into the local businesses.

The last thing I would say, and Deputy Bruton also brought up apprenticeships, is that it is about having a funding model that works. We have people in the hair and beauty business, for example, which is a low-margin business, who say the change to the apprenticeships in 2015 made some of those unaffordable for people when they are going to college.

We also said, and we have been banging this drum since 2019, that the business owner-manager network needs upskilling as well. Our businesspeople need upskilling. We made a proposal on a basic certificate in business knowledge, which we colloquially call the blue cert because it is modelled on the Teagasc green certificate. Germany upskills its family-run and small businesses through the so-called mittelstand network and we think we need to focus and upskill our local businesses in the same way.