Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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That has to be expedited. I hope the Minister will take that back to the Cabinet.

I will read from the minutes of a meeting in a county council local enterprise office regarding productivity supports. During April and the beginning of 2024, business advisers in an LEO visited several local businesses to promote the current productivity supports, which the Minister's Department is funding very well. These include green for business, lean for business and digital business, all of which we have discussed extensively during this meeting. All supports can help businesses reduce costs - this is from the minutes of the meeting in the local authority where the LEOs are embedded - and make them more energy efficient. So far in 2024, eight applications have been approved. That is two and one third businesses, if we think about the three types of supports that are available. It is eight in the first quarter. That is why I have serious concerns. In County Clare, for example, 92% of our workforce is employed by the SME sector. It is time for the Department to ask Enterprise Ireland, which the Minister said is in charge of the LEOs, to see what targets we are setting, what we are doing well and what is not working. There is no issue with funding for this from the Department, but it is not getting out there on the ground. Of those eight, I was responsible for four of them even knowing about the initiatives.

There is a PR aspect to this. I do not know what else we have to do but I ask the Minister to seriously examine this. The funding is there from the top down but bottom up, talking to small businesses, they do not know about it, they do not have time about it and they are told it is a lot of extra work. We are missing something here if only eight applications have been approved in one quarter when there are thousands of SMEs. We can ask for figures from all the LEOs to see how it is going and what is not working, because there is no shortage of funding coming from the Department.

Will Enterprise Ireland support businesses that cannot access supports from the Department of agriculture because they are adding value beyond packaging or very basic processing? For example, if a small creamery wanted to make flavoured yoghurt, it could not get support from that Department if it was adding flavours to it, because combining ingredients makes it no longer a primary processor, which is the only type of business the Department will support, but that is the innovation a lot of local food companies could undertake to create sustainable, long-term jobs in local communities. It is also good for small farmers to look into.

We have a large part of the world's supply of beef and milk and one ninth of the world's supply of baby formula milk, I believe, but we have to get real about the issues facing us. Climate change is going to heavily influence how we can import foods, and we are so not ready and not resilient as a country that has a lot of land and produces a lot of food. We need to take it seriously to support small, indigenous businesses that are not just thinking about exporting. What are we going to do to support them? These companies come to me having been told by the Department of agriculture that it cannot support them. We cannot live on beef and milk alone. We have a spud crisis at the moment. I would love to see the Department of enterprise taking the food issue much more seriously. We saw that when the Suez Canal was blocked, we could not import food. We are not facing up to the reality of what we are facing as a country. We are not climate resilient when it comes to feeding our own country, and the LEOs only support companies that produce food that is ready for export. There are huge gaps there and the Department needs to look at that. Whose responsibility is it? Is it that of IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland or the Department of agriculture? These gaps need to be filled.

Deputy Bruton touched on the issue of the 9% VAT. This is the biggest ask of restaurants, cafés and hotels, which are the biggest employers where I come from in lovely north Clare.

It is their one clear ask. Either they are completely wrong or the Department is missing something else. We gave it to them before. I have to go to Buswells now and meet a load of people from the hotel industry. The 9% VAT rate is a clear ask and there are small people doing big work on this.

Is there more to do on the PRSI reductions? We have done loads on wages, quality of life and days off for lots of different reasons, which is brilliant. The minimum wage was also increased, despite Sinn Féin not being able to acknowledge that fact, but what is being done to help small businesses who do not have big profits and cannot afford all those changes unless we give them the 9% or PRSI reductions? I know the Minister is working hard on budgets but we have to give them hope to get them through this season and next summer season as well. Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire.