Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
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I welcome Mr. Carey and his team. I congratulate him on his appointment. I have had some engagement with Enterprise Ireland over the years and the previous CEO. I did not know the Chairman but the CEO, Julie Sinnamon, did a great job. To be fair, Enterprise Ireland has a very good leadership team now with Leo Clancy and the others. I wish them all the best.

I am on the record a number of times in saying there is a stream of support in Ireland for companies coming in from the Industrial Development Authority, IDA, and for companies wishing to export from Enterprise Ireland. I have heard it said - even the Taoiseach and Tánaiste reiterated - that the LEOs are now the agency supporting the SME sector. We need more of a statutory body over that space because, as other speakers have already said, there are a lot of SMEs that will never export. The business model is not around export and their challenges are different from those wishing to export. I am not sure that they always get fair representation. I ask Enterprise Ireland to look at that.

Export businesses, in my experience, tend to fall across three broad areas: manufacturers, service businesses and technology businesses, in the main. The challenges in scaling and exporting are different across all but I ask Enterprise Ireland to have a look at a few things which I have, in previous experience, come across. One is difficulties getting support for intellectual property, IP, protection from Enterprise Ireland and, in particular, for patent protection. Someone goes in and they are not necessarily things that Enterprise Ireland wants to support from the get-go yet they are very important, particularly for tech-related companies or those that manufacture gizmos, to get established. What was Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, now South East Technological University, SETU, has three of the 15 top scientific gateways. A large portfolio of patents are warehoused down there. They are part of scientific development. Those patents are sitting there and being kept recurring. I have asked before why can we not allow people to access some of those and see if they can spin some of that stuff out? It is very difficult but there is a rich vein to tap in trying to marry up clever people with clever technologies that need to be developed.

The other point relates to VC access. As Mr. Carey knows, it is a real problem for start-ups and for developing exporters in this country, and even for indigenous businesses. He is probably well aware of one VC company in Waterford, Suir Valley Ventures. It took a long time to get going. It was very hard to get committed Government support and now it is offering money and doing some very good things. Could we try again and look at that to see how we can get funding into those models? There seems to be a reticence at times from Departments here to try to put funding into that type of activity. We almost do not really want to help people involved in private venture capital to get up and going. It is almost seen as the nasty side of the business that is for profit, yet we are prepared to plough money into research, mentoring, and business analysis that only does so much. That is something that needs to be looked at.

The difficulties of sale versus scale were mentioned. It is a problem. I am sure Mr. Carey has seen it in his own business life. There is a difficulty when a business gets to a certain point when there is a dilution of shareholding. An investor, entrepreneur or promoter will have to wait for a long time and he or she might decide to just cut and run. Often, the investors are not even Irish, which is a hell of a pity and the IP ends up going abroad. I am a member of the Regional Group, which lobbied hard in the budget and the Government has looked more benignly at entrepreneur relief and it has made changes to the employment investment incentive scheme, EIIS, but we need to do more in that respect because it is still a problem. When guys or girls get to a certain point in time the smart thing is actually to get out and, as Mr. Carey knows, it is very hard to keep control on business when you are taking in large amounts of money.

My final point relates to the increasing cost base in Ireland which is becoming a big problem for indigenous business. It is going to be a big problem in the next year or two for exporters, less so for those who have overseas operations, but for those who are trying to produce out of Ireland and remain competitive on the international markets. It is something that EI needs to be looking at in terms of speaking to the Government about the challenges for indigenous manufacturers in particular and those who rely on a manufacturing component in their business have to suffer in terms of wage and salary costs, etc. I would welcome any comments.