James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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We are now in public session and everyone is welcome to our public meeting. Before we proceed, I have a few housekeeping matters to go through. I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the House as regards references the witnesses make to other persons in their evidence. They are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation they make to the committee. This means that they have an absolute defence against any defamation action in respect of anything they say at the meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty, as Chair, to ensure that the privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, witnesses will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate when they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any member partaking via Microsoft Teams that prior to making their contribution to the meeting they confirm that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks and it is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I suggest we invite our witnesses to speak for approximately ten minutes and then allow members to speak, ask questions and make comments for approximately seven minutes each. If we have time, members will be allowed to make a second contribution. Members will be called as they appear on the week-one speaking rota. Committee members may substitute within their party or group. Attendees who are not members of the committee or substitutes may speak after committee members. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I propose we publish the opening statements and submissions provided by the witnesses on the committee website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The minutes of the previous meeting on 21 December 2025 were circulated in private session. Are they agreed? Agreed.

No. 4 is our engagement with Enterprise Ireland. As the oversight body, this committee is meeting with Enterprise Ireland, a State body within the responsibility of the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. We would like to engage with Enterprise Ireland on competitiveness and the cost of doing business in Ireland, its annual reports for 2023 and 2024, the strategy from 2025 to 2029 and related matters. We would particularly like to hear about Enterprise Ireland's strategy and plans given the current business environment facing Ireland both nationally and internationally. I am delighted to welcome the representatives from Enterprise Ireland. Ms Jenny Melia is the new chief executive. We congratulate her on her new role. She is accompanied in her role by Mr. Paul McKeown, executive director with responsibility for Enterprise Ireland's finance and investment solutions division, and Ms Alexa Toomey, head of strategy and policy at Enterprise Ireland.

I now invite the chief executive of Enterprise Ireland to make her opening statement.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Chair, members and Oireachtas colleagues for the invitation this morning to address and engage with the Oireachtas joint committee. I welcome the opportunity to assist the committee with its ongoing work on competitiveness and the cost of doing business in Ireland as well as discussing other items, including our ambitions for Irish-owned exporting businesses, as laid out in our five-year strategy entitled Delivering for Ireland, Leading Globally: Strategy 2025 - 2029. I am delighted to be joined today by my colleagues Ms Alexa Toomey and Mr. Paul McKeown.

Enterprise Ireland is the State agency responsible for supporting Irish-owned companies to start, scale and win business in global markets. I would like to take the opportunity today to, first, provide an overview of our work and, second, discuss the steps we are taking to support Irish exporters to achieve their global ambitions. We are very much a purpose-driven organisation. We build sustainable communities across Ireland by investing in Irish-owned exporting businesses, and our long-term ambition is that our Irish exporters become the primary driver of our national economy. Mirroring the ambitions of the resilient Irish enterprise base, our strategy focuses on four strategic pillars to support our client companies to start, compete, scale and connect.

We work with more than 4,500 Irish businesses that are exporting or are in the early stages of their exporting journey. These companies span the technology, manufacturing and internationally traded services sectors, and we also support high-potential start-up companies, which are predominantly highly innovative enterprises. We are the largest investor of early-stage start-ups in Europe by deal count, and we are also the primary funder of applied research in Ireland across our third level institutions. We are a global team of more than 800 people working across ten offices in Ireland and 42 international offices, providing companies with both financial and non-financial support, both here in Ireland and in our international markets, at all stages of the exporting journey.

In spite of a changing global business environment, our indigenous exporters continue to demonstrate their agility and resilience. They serve as vital economic pillars in towns and villages across Ireland, employing thousands and spending billions of euro in our economy. As we enter 2026, we find ourselves at a rare pivot point in the business environment. Over the past decade, our Irish businesses have faced an extraordinary series of global market shocks including Brexit, a global pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis as well as uncertainty last year in relation to new global tariffs. We are coming into this year on the back of a strong performance in 2025 and with a good degree of optimism across our client base. Our resilient Irish businesses have shown an ability not just to withstand disruption but to respond with determination and ambition. In the past decade, we have seen exports from these companies grow from €18.63 billion in 2014 to €36.75 billion in 2024. The local expenditure by these companies in the Irish economy increased from €22.9 billion in 2014 to €42.65 billion in 2024. In the same period, employment increased from just over 180,000. Two days ago, we published our 2025 end of year statement for jobs, which shows our client base now employs just over 232,400 people.

Some 80% of our clients’ exports continue to be in core markets and we saw strong growth across all sectors in 2024, including a number of firsts. For example, exports from our companies, reaching a record €36.75 billion, surpassed our 2022 to 2024 strategy targets. Exports to Europe grew to €12.7 billion and this was the first time this region has overtaken the UK. At the same time, the UK, now our second largest export territory, achieved €10.52 billion in exports. This was the first time we saw the UK exceed the €10 billion mark. In North America, our third largest market, we saw exports rise by 8% in 2024 to €7.3 billion. Achieving this success and sustained growth has not been without its challenges for our Irish exporters. We survey our companies annually to understand their outlook, growth opportunities and ongoing challenges on a national economic scale as well as within their respective sectors.

At Enterprise Ireland’s international markets week late last year, we surveyed almost 500 of the participating companies, both established and new exporters, and they identified the top three challenges facing them as being global uncertainty, the cost of doing business, and staffing and retention concerns. While these issues remain challenging in 2026, working with companies as they navigate both domestic and global competitiveness challenges has risen to the fore. When looking at the cost of doing business in Ireland, increases in labour and input costs, including the cost of utilities and infrastructural challenges, are all impacting the Irish enterprise base.

Our strategy sets out our ambition to have more productive and profitable Irish-owned companies founded on innovation, digitalisation, operational efficiency, sustainability and led by strong leadership teams. We will work with our clients to support them to achieve a 3% annual average increase in productivity over the next four years. This will take a whole-of-ecosystem approach. We look forward to continuing our work with our partners across government and the wider enterprise base. We welcome the establishment of the cost-of-business advisory forum and the recent publication of the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan.

To secure our future economy and protect it from further external shocks, we must strengthen and diversify Ireland's enterprise base, which includes a focus on a stronger and more strategic balance between our foreign direct investment, FDI, companies and our Irish-owned exporters. Much of our economic success in recent years has been linked with our FDI companies, and our economy and enterprise base have benefited greatly from this. The experience and learnings from this important period in our economic story can be harnessed to help our Irish exporters be the driving force behind the next exciting phase of growth. To strengthen our future economy, therefore, we must back our Irish-owned exporters to scale, be more competitive, double down on innovation and invest in their people and skills. Our priority in Enterprise Ireland is to work closely with our companies to control the controllables to drive on with our start and scaling agenda. This will be about increasing the level and impact of innovation, strengthening supply chains and increasing operational efficiencies, investing in leadership capability and workforce skills, accelerating digitisation and the effective use of artificial intelligence, AI, and continued market diversification, doubling down in Europe and the UK while continuing to focus on winning new business in the US.

By the end of 2029, we are targeting: employment at our client companies to reach 275,000; exports from these companies to reach €50 billion; 1,000 new start-ups supported over the lifetime of our five-year strategy; 1,700 new exporters; a €2.2 billion research, development and innovation, RDI, spend by companies in 2029; and a significant spend of €55 billion by supported companies in the Irish economy in 2029.

We are committed to supporting our Irish exporters to start, grow, scale and achieve their global ambitions. We believe they can become the primary driver of the Irish economy. I thank members and Oireachtas colleagues.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for joining us. The job figures, which were announced last week, were a positive reflection. There was an increase of almost 2% nationwide and my county saw a net increase of 3.9%. Enterprise Ireland's presence is being felt in every county. That balanced regional development piece, which has become an objective in the past ten years, seems to be materialising. That is important and good.

I will pick up on one point in Ms Melia's opening statement. She referenced three areas of concern, which were global uncertainty, costs to businesses, and staffing and retention concerns. Will she elaborate on the staffing and retention concerns? What are the challenges in that area?

Ms Jenny Melia:

Enterprise Ireland's client base is made up of the SME cohort of companies. In Ireland, SMEs make up approximately 99.8% of our businesses. One of the challenges for our companies is finding the staff and skills. We will be collecting our 2025 figures for exports over the next few weeks and we will have a more detailed, fresh survey with the companies. When I look back to our 2024 figures, we had in the region of 6,700 vacancies across our client companies at the end of 2024. Companies have to find the talent and skills. When they find and train staff and so on, the next challenge is to retain them. There is such competition for talent across the market. The third piece that companies share with us is the need to ensure that they are adequately training and upskilling their workforce. That is where supports from Enterprise Ireland come through. We provide training grants to companies. We work with our partners across the ecosystem, including our colleagues in SOLAS and Skillnet.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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That is very good. One of the key functions in every county is the local enterprise office. I was a little surprised that local enterprise offices did not feature at all in Ms Melia's opening statement. Many small businesses feel that if they knock on the door of Enterprise Ireland, it will not answer because the businesses are not eligible, do not do enough business or do not have the potential to grow. Such businesses go back to the local enterprise offices. Ms Melia did not mention local enterprise offices at all. What is the dynamic between Enterprise Ireland and local enterprise offices? They fall under the remit of Enterprise Ireland but are hosted by local authorities. They are answering to two masters.

Ms Jenny Melia:

We are very close to our colleagues in the local enterprise offices. I met the heads of the local enterprise offices at their annual meeting before Christmas. I think it was the first week of December. First and foremost, they are jointly managed by Enterprise Ireland and the local authorities. As the Deputy said, the offices are located within the local authorities. It is important that companies in regional locations have boots on the ground. We participated in their end-of-year results last week, when they announced a very positive jobs return. We manage the budget.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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If the local enterprise offices are jointly managed by Enterprise Ireland and the local authorities, when did Enterprise Ireland last sit with the likes of the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA?

Ms Jenny Melia:

My colleagues meet the managing authorities. The managing authorities and my colleagues, with the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, our parent Department, would be part-----

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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In terms of local authorities and every strategy being different, who at Enterprise Ireland meets the chief executive or the executive team or the members of a county council about a strategic way forward for that particular county? Who from Enterprise Ireland's stakeholder engagement side of the local enterprise offices has those meetings? When was that last meeting in Offaly? Perhaps I am getting too granular. Ms Melia might give me an example of a county.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I cannot give the Deputy an answer about Offaly.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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I am asking about any county. When was the last time that Enterprise Ireland met an executive on the strategic objectives of that county from a local enterprise office perspective?

Ms Jenny Melia:

Our divisional manager with responsibility for our regions and our local enterprise offices would meet with the local-----

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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The local enterprise office reports to the county council. It is not about meeting the local enterprise offices. It is about meeting who they report to. When was the last time, in any county and using any example that Ms Melia can give me, that Enterprise Ireland met the local authority executive to determine the pathway forward for the local enterprise office?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I know there were meetings in Kildare with Ms Sonya Kavanagh. I will have to come back to the Deputy with the relevant date.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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I am asking about the path. From the perspective of balanced regional development and the different objectives of every county, that would be important.

There was a lot of positivity and optimism in the opening statement, and I do not mean to rain on the parade, but there was no mention of the failure of businesses. What is the current failure rate for companies that have received funds and grants from Enterprise Ireland? Does Enterprise Ireland keep a lead time or a window for how long companies stay in business or go out of business after receiving a grant?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I will look, first and foremost, at our start-up environment. Those are the youngest companies and are, therefore, at the highest risk stage of their business. We reviewed our start-up companies and portfolio in 2020 and 2021. I will use the word "success", but I want to put a little context around it in a moment. We had a success rate of approximately 80% or 85% for our start-ups, versus a national success rate of approximately 60% or 65%.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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How does Enterprise Ireland engage with the 20% of companies that fail so we are learning from them rather than forgetting about them?

Ms Jenny Melia:

That was what I was going to say about context. It is important when we are talking about entrepreneurs and the steps they take to set up high-risk businesses that we always talk about failure as a part of the business environment.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Are there statistics available? Where grants were awarded in 2023, how many companies had gone out of business by 2025?

Ms Jenny Melia:

When we support start-ups, we typically support them against a three-year growth plan. When we are following the life cycle of a company, we typically work to timelines of three years, five years and seven years. The fast-to-fail projects, which fail in their first year, are projects that we typically support under something like a feasibility fund. That is very much an opportunity for promoters to test their ideas and the market before they invest in the business.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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I am conscious that my time is up, but I would be interested to get a better feel for the different grants and, over a three- or five-year timescale, what the success and failure rates were. I would also like some examples of the engagement between Enterprise Ireland and local authorities to set the pathway for the enterprise offices.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy has pre-empted a good question. At some stage, it would be great for the committee to get an opportunity to do a site visit. We would like to do the same with the IDA. We spoke about that with the Secretary General of the Department. There might be a good chance to have a more in-depth conversation about that matter.

Ms Jenny Melia:

Is that to visit a company or-----

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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That is to visit Enterprise Ireland.

Ms Jenny Melia:

Okay.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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If we are welcome.

Ms Jenny Melia:

The committee is always welcome.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Melia and Deputy Clendennen.

Conor Murphy (Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the delegation and I thank the chief executive for her presentation. With the cost of doing business and global uncertainty, the report contains a sense of optimism about where the economy is going, balanced by a recognition of the continuing challenges and uncertainty that businesses will face both at home and abroad. I am impressed with the figures for regional balance. In my previous job, one of my key priorities was to achieve regional balance across the North, which has always been a challenge but nonetheless is changing.

Ms Melia highlighted a point that has been talked about many times since I came into this institution, but I am not certain what is actually being done about it, namely, the balance between FDI and support for indigenous businesses, particularly in the context of where the American Administration is going and may go in terms of the protection of its own companies, the idea of tariffs and the consequences for FDI in Ireland. Everyone recognises that that has always been a risk factor but it is an increasing risk factor in terms of shocks that might hit the economy. Ms Melia has quite rightly said that FDI has been enormously beneficial but I believe that a lot of eggs have been placed in a single basket. I have raised this question with Ministers and, indeed, the Taoiseach when he was in, and everyone agrees that we need to do more to rebalance and support indigenous companies and to make sure that we insulate ourselves from some of the global economic shocks. What is actually happening in that sphere? Enterprise Ireland is saying the same thing, but what policy levers need to be changed to achieve that? Is IDA Ireland still on the same mission? Where does its plan fit in with that of Enterprise Ireland? Does IDA Ireland still have the same mission to attract as much FDI as it can or has it been adjusted in terms of a general sense from the Government that we need to do more to strike a balance? What policy levers have been adjusted to achieve the outcome that has been suggested? Everyone else I have raised this question with seems to say that this is the right thing to do, but what is actually happening in that regard?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Senator for his questions. The most important policy lever we have to achieve a rebalance or a better balance across the enterprise base is the scaling lever. What I mean by that is the funding that is needed to help our Irish-owned companies reach the next level and get there faster. That means in terms of their exports, the size of their teams, and the make-up of their leadership teams so that they build up a strong senior leaders' suite and a middle management team.

In terms of the national development plan, Enterprise Ireland now has an additional €100 million. Between now and 2030, that funding will come through the Enterprise Ireland budget and do two things. First, we will use it for direct investment into some of those scaling companies. Second, we will use the funding as a multiplier of our scaling funds. That will essentially leverage additional investment, be it from Ireland or international markets. Last Monday, we announced our end-of-year results and talked about how a €49.5 million investment by Enterprise Ireland in 2025 leveraged total funding of €440 million. That is such important funding for those companies because it allows them to go much faster and deeper in their research and development and their innovation. It also allows them to hire the best talent, which is often talent that has been involved in other scaling companies and companies that have grown quickly.

On the question about our colleagues in IDA Ireland, they are still going for their targets. As I always say, I was one of the beneficiaries of FDI investment in the 1990s because when I left college, I could stay in Ireland and work in research. I did not have to emigrate. FDI has been very good to Ireland. One of the things that Enterprise Ireland does very consistently and well is we continue to build a diversified client base. Therefore, we have clients in food, manufacturing, technology and services.

Conor Murphy (Sinn Fein)
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I am running short on time and I want to ask another question. If there is a rebalancing exercise and IDA Ireland is doing as much as it has been doing, then it does not strike me that there is oversight by the Government and an attempt to control that exercise, which is of some concern.

I note that the all-Ireland economy was not mentioned in Enterprise Ireland's report even though trade has grown sixfold since the Good Friday Agreement. The report mentioned stronger supply chains. Obviously, opportunities already exist in North-South trade. Before Christmas, an ESRI was published that contained comparable figures for supporting that growth in terms of the all-Ireland economy. Does doing business North-South and South-North feature as part of Enterprise Ireland's objectives? Is that contained within Enterprise Ireland's UK target in the report? Is it a particular feature in terms of growing the economy and strengthening supply chains across the island?

Ms Jenny Melia:

We have very strong supply chains, as the Senator will know, in the food and drink sector. That is the way they have done business for many years between the North and the South. The UK is an incredibly important market for Enterprise Ireland in terms of it being our second biggest export market. We work very closely with our colleagues in InterTradeIreland on the shared island agenda. Where investment for enterprise projects through that agenda is concerned, we now have a fund of €30 million between ourselves and InterTradeIreland. In 2025, we doubled down on our programmes for developing new women entrepreneurs and new women business leaders on an all-island basis. The other agenda that took priority, under the shared island initiative, was the sustainability and decarbonisation agenda and projects that would benefit both sides of the Border in our horticulture industry, for example, and the cement industry, which is a heavy carbon emitter.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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The next slot belongs to Fianna Fáil and, if it is okay, I will ask questions.

I want to discuss one of the things that I am very passionate about, which comes from talking to people of my own generation who have worked on really exciting projects in the area of entrepreneurial activity. Something that I often hear back from them is that they feel Ireland lacks a little bit of ambition when it comes to harvesting what we have managed to develop here over many decades in terms of foreign direct investment in particular. I do not need to list everything and I do not want to spend too much time explaining that to professionals who work on this as their day jobs and know this inside out. Let us consider the level of investment by American multinationals in the tech sector in Dublin. There has been a lot of debate and discussion on investment. The then Minister, Simon Coveney, was probably the original Minister who started discussing how Ireland could replicate what Station F had achieved in France, particularly Paris. Everyone knows and accepts that not every country can have a Station F, but Ireland is uniquely positioned with the numerous multinationals located here. Surely there is an opportunity for us to further grow and enhance our start-up culture. For example, we could enable entrepreneurs who are living around Europe and might want to come to Dublin or Ireland and start their companies here or work with Irish founders. We could enhance that system.

One of the things that I have done since the general election is give a presentation to my parliamentary party. The Taoiseach and seven other Cabinet members were present that day. I spoke at length about the need for further investment in the International Financial Services Centre, IFSC, in Dublin. I am interested in hearing the views of the chief executive. I know that Ms Melia is new in her role and that with each change in leadership comes a different outlook and a change in approach. Does she see an opportunity to enhance the start-up culture and generate Irish unicorn firms? Let us consider countries like Estonia. Let us also consider Stripe in Ireland. We have had some really successful young Irish people who have gone on and done amazing things internationally. Does Ms Melia think we are missing a trick? Is this something that is on Enterprise Ireland's radar?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for his question and for sharing his thoughts. Station F has got a lot of attention worldwide in terms of the progress made by the French and the amount of venture capital, VC, that they have brought into the French companies. I always think that when we are talking about start-ups, it is really important that we are talking about the breadth of the entrepreneur base. It is important to have unicorn firms but some other start-ups will go on to become great companies. They will never reach unicorn status but they will still be a really important employer in their respective regions.

To answer the question about the hub, we have a very ambitious plan around start-up Ireland. To break it down simply, it consists of a national hub, a virtual piece through our programmes, and physical programmes we will roll out to entrepreneurs that will be both sectorally specific or can run in the regions. There will also be a physical space that will bring entrepreneurs together because, as was said, this is where some of the really interesting ideas come from and those cross-cutting conversations happen between people coming from different technical and commercial backgrounds and so on. We have just rolled out a first accelerator for female entrepreneurs, the NextWave accelerator. I believe we have a second cohort of promoters ready to come through it. In Ireland now, we have spent the last 20 years building the start-up ecosystem. Enterprise Ireland is the largest investor by deal count in early-stage start-ups. I think the ecosystem is at a place right now where we have the critical mass and the ambition to be able to have these more ambitious accelerator developments alongside that physical space.

To answer the questions specifically about the IFSC, we have in the region of 60,000 people employed in the financial services sector. Every year in Enterprise Ireland, we would typically bring 12 to 14 new fintech start-ups through our high potential start-up portfolio of about 90 companies, so that is quite a high percentage. Some of those fintech start-ups have gone on to become our Irish unicorns. Examples include Fenergo, which announced 300 jobs last year in a new AI centre. It is just over the other side of the water on the quays. We have a lot of talent in fintech. We have a spillover in both fintech and the medtech sector with people who have spent time in SMEs and people who have spent time in multinationals. We have that crossover between companies and some of those people then going out to spin out their own companies.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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There is that confluence of activity. Even going back before the era of these accelerators and the growth of the technology sector, we can look at what pharmaceuticals did. If we look at Cork, there are some fantastic engineering companies that have grown to become international leaders in the pharmaceutical business because of their engineering expertise in pharmaceutical builds. The PM Group is just one of a number of examples I could reference. I just get the impression there is a little bit of frustration there among young founders I have been speaking to.

I was fortunate to start my undergraduate education up the road here. Some of the people are still working in entrepreneurial activity nearly seven or eight years later and they are doing really well. Quite a few are out in California and I am very proud of them, but they often feed back to me that everything is there. Maybe this country is lacking a facility where we can bring everybody together under the one roof. I did not want to be flippant about it, but it is a bit like having too much of a State-led approach sometimes, as Ms Melia will know, can be counterintuitive or counter-productive. One would wonder if it would be worth partnering with some of the existing organisations such as Dogpatch Labs – which I spoke to before and is very impressive - and others up in the IFSC around how to grow, enhance and develop what is there, what is available and what is ready to be used. I believe a lot of the office buildings up there are starting to decant because of the building regulations. Is there an opportunity on this front? To keep things on schedule, we might return to this point in another round of questions because I have gone over my own time. I call Deputy Albert Dolan.

Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Go raibh maith agat. I really appreciate everyone from Enterprise Ireland being with us here today to give us their time and engage with us. How do we rank at a European level in terms of cost competitiveness? Is this something Enterprise Ireland is hearing a lot about from early-stage start-ups and companies engaging with it? How are we ranking across Europe and how do we ensure we will retain any industry we build up here?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I will ask my colleague, Ms Toomey, to come in on this point in a few minutes. I thank the Deputy for his question. We rank seventh at the moment on the competitiveness index. Another ranking I always look at is where we rank on the EU innovation scoreboard. We rank fifth on it. I look at that scoreboard because it is so important from a talent perspective in terms of the type of innovation-backed companies we are trying to drive in Ireland because with them come quality jobs. To answer part of the Deputy’s question, one of the things we hear from our start-up companies is the cost of bringing in great talent. That can be tech talent because there is such competition from the multinationals. I think it is important to say as well that not all the multinationals are foreign-owned. We have our Irish-owned multinationals as well and they are also competing for talent.

The second thing that is really important in terms of our start-up companies is building the links between the third level institutions, our technology centres and our technology gateways, not just with the start-ups but with the established companies as well. One of the first things for an established company when it is trying to get on the research and development or innovation ladder is that it might not have the research and development people in the company to drive the research and development plan. Our colleagues in the universities and technology centres we are supporting can be the research and development arm that a company might not be able to afford right now. One of the reasons we set up the innovation voucher programme back in 2007 was to allow small businesses, start-ups, no matter what sector they were in, to go to their local university or technological university, or institute of technology, as it was at the time, and use that to get a piece of work done, to get some technical challenge solved.

We are very fortunate in Ireland in terms of the number of STEM graduates we have coming through. We are top in Europe again in terms of our STEM talent, another really important scoreboard. We are significantly ahead of the EU average and we are second in terms of our female STEM talent. I had the pleasure a few months ago of speaking at the Women in STEM Summit, where I got to meet the three young entrepreneurs from County Kerry who had won the Young Scientists prize, the three Murphy sisters. I looked around the room and I could see we are so fortunate with the number of female engineers and scientists we have coming through.

Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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That is critical.

Ms Jenny Melia:

It is. I will ask Ms Toomey to say a little more around driving the talent pool and what we are doing there.

Ms Alexa Toomey:

I think talent is one of the absolute core drivers of competitiveness for our Irish companies. As Ms Melia pointed out, they are largely SMEs but we are very proud of the small number of Irish multinational companies we have. We are working across a number of fronts in this regard. We are working directly with the companies to help them to build talent within their existing staff. It is really around building the middle management layer out so they can have a dispersed leadership team as they scale and grow. We are also helping companies to take on new staff. We provide employment grants to companies who have that clear growth ambition and a clear growth plan where we are looking out about three years. We will help them with the cost of hiring people into those roles.

We are also working with the leadership teams of our clients because when we are talking about companies competing on a European and global scale, they need to be led by teams that have that global mindset. We have a range of programmes targeting the C-suite as well to make sure they have all they need to lead these businesses and make sure they are as competitive as they can be. As well as skills, and not to stray too far away from that topic, we work with companies across a number of fronts on their competitiveness.

We cannot do much directly in Enterprise Ireland to control the cost of doing business but what we can do is help our companies to control their own costs. We would have a lot of offers to help them in terms of operational excellence and lean productivity supports. Equally, we bring in digital solutions that might help them to be more efficient and to use what they have to the best of their abilities.

Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I want to echo what the Cathaoirleach said previously. He brought a proposal to our parliamentary party and I was fortunate to be there on the evening to listen to that. It was a very solid proposal. It involved thinking outside the box, not just for Dublin but for Ireland and the whole enterprise scene. We need to be asking ourselves some questions. We have brought in all of this multinational talent and our talent pool in Ireland for tech is incredible. There is no doubt that there are people within those companies who have ideas or who want to contribute in a greater way and we need to present them with Dublin and Ireland as being the point at which they can do that and make that difference. His proposal merits massive consideration and should be forwarded to Enterprise Ireland.

One of the things I hear back from constituents who are engaging with either the local enterprise office or Enterprise Ireland is that the threshold for access to supports is a bit high. Maybe I am misinterpreting it but it seems that Enterprise Ireland will only engage with those who have export potential. I ask the witnesses to talk about that so that I am clear about how it works, how people avail of supports and the best mechanism for approaching it.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. Our supports are geared towards companies that are exporting or getting ready to export. For us, getting ready to export is everything. We are doing work under the bonnet with companies around strengthening their leadership teams and making sure they have the best innovation, they are as lean as they can be, they are well financed and they have good cash flow. The next piece for us then is to look at the market opportunities for them. We work here in Ireland on doing all of the first steps around market intelligence and then our teams in our 42 international offices do the local work on the ground around business culture, the dynamics that companies have to navigate in an international market, different languages and so on. They work on making connections and organising good meetings for them so that when they are in market, they are getting the best bang for their buck.

We talked about the local enterprise offices earlier. We work very closely with the LEOs on bringing a pathway of companies through from local enterprise to Enterprise Ireland. Typically, about 160 companies would move from the local enterprise offices to Enterprise Ireland for engagement every year but we will have worked with them through our centre of excellence team that leads out with the LEOs to make sure that we are bringing some of that Enterprise Ireland intelligence and experience to them before they come to our agency.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their opening statement and commend them on the work they are doing. The single biggest issue that causes me concern is youth unemployment. Our youth unemployment, at over 14%, should be a worry to everybody on this island but particularly to Enterprise Ireland as an enterprise agency. I want to zone in on that today in terms of measures that Enterprise Ireland is taking and how it is measuring the outcomes of the money that is invested to ensure that youth unemployment comes down. I completely understand that we must look at this in an EU context. If we look at some of the other member states, we also see high youth unemployment but that does not give me any type of satisfaction. I want to focus on what is being done in Germany in comparison to what is being done here. In Germany, youth unemployment stands at between 6% and 7% at the moment but the figure in this country is almost double that. What is Enterprise Ireland doing to specifically target youth unemployment? I refer in particular to what it is doing to ensure that the jobs the witnesses spoke about are quality, sustainable jobs and not just short-term placements. I cannot figure out how Enterprise Ireland can say that there are 6,700 vacancies when we have youth unemployment running at over 14%. I ask the witnesses to speak on that specifically.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Deputy for her question. I will invite my colleague, Ms Toomey, to respond in a moment in terms of what we are doing on our skills strategy and I will also invite my colleague, Mr. McKeown, to talk about how we measure success.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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How concerned is Ms Melia in the first instance? Is it a major concern for Enterprise Ireland that we have youth unemployment of 14%?

Ms Jenny Melia:

It would be a major concern for us that we have companies that have vacancies they cannot fill, particularly companies in regional locations, while at the same time, to the Deputy's point, there are people looking to both work locally and live locally, which is such an important part of what we are about in Enterprise Ireland. In the context of youth unemployment, we would look at it across a number of different types of skills. If we take our youngest graduates first of all, those just coming out of college, we have a grad start programme. We have a one-to-one relationship with our companies so when we are talking to them about some of their skills needs, one of the things we can do is support them to take on up to three graduates. We give them a salary support to do that.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I am sorry to interrupt but I want to get to the nub of this. Is Enterprise Ireland ensuring that companies that are funded have a graduate programme? Is it part of the criteria for funding that they have a graduate programme? Is Enterprise Ireland following up and making sure that each of them has such a programme? Has Enterprise Ireland noticed that graduate programmes are reducing?

Ms Jenny Melia:

We have a specific programme to put graduates in rather than having it as a criterion that a company must take on a graduate. We have companies that might bring in three graduates at a time. In more recent times, we have seen a bigger focus by companies on bringing in digitalisation skills and so on through the graduate community. One of the really important things for us when we are looking at a company that is bringing in graduates is to ensure that it will be a really good experience for the graduate as well. We want to try to get as many graduates as possible into the SME companies, first and foremost, because graduates will move around across their careers. It is very important to us that there are good mentors in the company and that we can see a development pathway for the graduates once they go into the company.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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There is no obligation on enterprises, even if they are funded by Enterprise Ireland, to take on graduates. In terms of apprenticeships, is there any obligation on the SMEs that Enterprise Ireland works with to take on apprentices or is there any support, encouragement or incentives for them to do so?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I really welcome being part of that conversation in the enterprise sector and I also welcome the fact that there is now more of a focus on apprentices and developing new apprenticeships. For example, we have worked very closely with SOLAS over the last 18 months to double the number of apprentices that will be coming through to work in maintenance and repair operations, MRO, for our airline companies here in Ireland. That is an example of an area where we had vacancies and we did not have enough people coming through. This was one of the announcements that was made last year. There is a doubling of apprentices.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Is Ms Melia saying that there is a commitment to a doubling of apprenticeships or that there has been a doubling?

Ms Jenny Melia:

As far as I am aware, those new apprentices should be starting in the first quarter of this year. We were talking with some of our companies in the MRO space and that has been widely welcomed. To go back to what I said in my opening statement, this highlights the importance of the enterprise ecosystem. In Enterprise Ireland we do not create apprenticeship programmes so it is very important that we are feeding information on the skills needs and skills gaps to our colleagues in SOLAS and working with them to make sure those apprenticeship programmes are being developed and designed.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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What are enterprises telling Enterprise Ireland about what apprentices need to be able to create that ecosystem of apprenticeships or to look at the German model and the way they do it? What are enterprises telling Enterprise Ireland they need in order to be able to do that?

Ms Jenny Melia:

We can definitely see a need for more mechanical engineering apprentices. We can see a need for more skills like plumbing, which I know might sound like something you might have heard ten years ago, but even in terms of data centre conversations now, there is a greater need for electricians and for more plumbers coming through.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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We know the need. What I need to know is how are we going to get, for instance, more plumbers in? What part is Enterprise Ireland going to play to ensure that we have more plumbers and a better match for people to fill those jobs?

Ms Jenny Melia:

We have a small team within Enterprise Ireland that is constantly focused on skills. One of the activities we run is what we call a spotlight on skills. We canvas our companies across particular sectors or particular regions to see what are the skills that are most needed there and then we build that activity into whatever we are doing on the ground in that region with the local stakeholders, be it Skillnet, SOLAS or be it colleagues in something like the advanced manufacturing cluster.

Ms Alexa Toomey:

In that spotlighting skills programme, we have worked with over 600 of our companies. We really get under the hood of their businesses to understand their specific skills needs and then we help them to partner with education providers to make sure the correct skills are coming through that they are going to be able to take on. In terms of the partnerships we have, we do not develop or roll-out apprenticeship programmes, as Ms Melia said, but we have strategic partnerships in place with SOLAS - we have a really good working relationship with it - where we share the information around the areas where our clients require skills.

In terms of obliging our clients to take on graduates or apprentices, if you think of our client base, we have some large companies, and we would love to see more large Irish companies, but the vast majority of our clients are in that small and medium category. I do not think they are all in a position to take on specific roles or programmes. It is really about making sure that we are working with our colleagues across the ecosystem who are developing the programmes and who are making sure the right skills are coming through. It is also about helping our companies to hire those people and helping them with the cost of those additional jobs.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Looking at Enterprise Ireland over the years and working with its base in Athlone during my previous job as a councillor in Offaly County Council, I have always found its staff to be very helpful. They are also very engaging with the companies in the midland region. When I say that, I am talking about companies I deal with daily.

Once a company is in with Enterprise Ireland, everything is looked after and it is in the system. It could be compared to the health system here. Once you get in, you are on the train and it does not stop until it gets sorted out. Unfortunately, what I am hearing on the ground is that sometimes it is quite difficult to get into Enterprise Ireland. First of all, it is difficult to get taken seriously and it is also difficult to get the funding that is required to get started up. When someone has a company, it is difficult to get funding to help progress into those international markets.

In her opening statement, Ms Melia said that Enterprise Ireland welcomes the accelerating infrastructure report and action plan. Most of that is about cutting red tape and taking away the blockages that hold up progress. With regard to Enterprise Ireland and the criteria that people have to go through to become a client, maybe Enterprise Ireland could take a look at that and make it easier for companies.

We spoke earlier about unicorns. They are vital. Ms Melia also spoke about the slow and steady companies that become unicorns in the end, but we also need not to be risk averse. We need to be out there. If you look at angel investors, they will probably invest in 20 companies and only expect one of those companies to make it. We should be doing something similar in Enterprise Ireland. I know it costs money, but we need to invest in our people and companies - within reason - to make sure we get those unicorns and they are not ending up in other countries or jurisdictions.

Deputy Dolan brought up the issue of cost competitiveness and Ms Melia mentioned that we have gone to seventh in the cost competitiveness table. We used to be top and then we went down to the top three. What has happened to us as a country that we are now seventh and will probably end up further down the table? Where have we fallen down? What costs have increased that have not increased in other countries?

Ms Jenny Melia:

The biggest reason is our infrastructure and the fact of where we were coming out of the financial crash and the slowdown in infrastructure spend and construction workers moving to other countries to find work at the time and so on. We are really only starting to pick that back up in terms of that infrastructure.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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How is infrastructure affecting our competitiveness? Where is Ms Melia seeing it?

Ms Jenny Melia:

When I am out talking with companies around the country. This is not regionally specific, but they type of things they bring up is availability of local housing. That is something we have heard a lot more in the last three or four years versus maybe ten years ago, particularly in locations around the country. That is the number one thing. The second thing would be around delays in being connected to the grid. That is something that came up with some of our other companies. Depending on what part of the country you are in, the road infrastructure is an issue. I know that there are some very ambitious projects-----

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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For the lay person, how is that directly affecting our competitiveness? When we look at the criteria that goes into making up those competitiveness reports that we end up being seventh on the table, where do roads come into that? I see where housing comes into it because rent for housing is so much more expensive and the lack of housing make it harder to bring in employees. However, with regard to the roads, we have a road system there and it is fairly decent. We need to improve on it, absolutely, but we have the transport and road system in the country, particularly in Dublin. It is all about getting the products out of the country and we have the ports and airports here. I am kind of lost on how the road infrastructure affects competitiveness, but I do not want to get bogged down on that.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I will give the Deputy a simple example. An employee has a choice to work in one of two companies. One of the companies is in a congested area and another is not. That becomes a hiring or a talent issue for the company that is trying to bring someone in. It is not unlike housing in that piece. If we want employees to be able to work in a local town or village, we need to be sure there is somewhere there for them to rent or to buy.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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We mentioned energy as one of the things, but every country has had the whole problem with the price of energy going up as a result of the Ukrainian war. We have the cost of doing business, but, again, our costs seem to have gone up more than every other country. The red tape that is involved is another issue to do with competitiveness. What we have heard in this committee from the likes of IBEC, representatives from the hospitality industry, whether it is the restaurant or hotel federations, RGDATA and ISME, is that minimum wage seems to be an issue as well. Is Enterprise Ireland coming across that? Perhaps the increases should be linked to inflation going forward.

Ms Jenny Melia:

Looking at the diversity of our enterprise base, when I am talking to the tech companies in our portfolio, the conversation around minimum wage does not come up because most of those employees are not on minimum wage. It certainly comes up with our companies in the manufacturing sector, particularly with companies that may not have invested in automation over the years and are very dependent on labour. As Ms Toomey said, when we are out with companies, we will always look for opportunities to insert some efficiencies or automation to try to give them that little bit more productivity and profitability. Cash flow and making sure they have enough cash will always be an issue for SMEs.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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From the organisations and groups we were dealing with, the issue they had was not with people who were on minimum wage because most of them were paying more than minimum wage. It was the domino effect it had.

Ms Jenny Melia:

Absolutely.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I have some more questions. I will come back in later.

Ms Jenny Melia:

We hear about that domino effect because once some people get a raise or a lift in a company, then everybody is looking for a lift. It is the totality of the cost rather than just the people who are on the minimum wage. Certainly, we hear about that on the manufacturing side of the house.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for their contributions so far. I might have to come back around again with a few of these questions. First, I wish to talk about the venture capital side of things. I looked up some information in this regard and Enterprise Ireland is particularly active in the areas of health, life sciences, sport technologies and stuff like that. When Enterprise Ireland decides to invest in a company, what is the key factor? Is it final potential jobs or income? In the context of income, how long does Enterprise Ireland stay as a shareholder? Is there a case to be made that Enterprise Ireland should stay on to generate revenue to invest in other companies? Where does the balance lie?

Purely on the venture capital side, given that the likes of financial technologies and other aspects will be hugely affected by AI in the coming years, is Enterprise Ireland looking at diversifying where it invests in the years to come?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I will start and then I will hand over to my colleague, Mr. Paul McKeown. When we are looking at a product, the first thing we always look at is the people involved and their backgrounds and experience. Our experience is that a good team with a bad idea will go further than a bad team with a good idea in terms of how they execute.

With regard to looking at the totality, we are absolutely looking at the jobs and the export potential. We are looking at and validating the size of the market opportunity alongside the company. We also look at what we call the financial runway, that is, how much it will cost to get the company there. The Deputy talked about medical technology, for example. Our medical technology companies might be carrying out research and development and innovation and going through all of their clinical trials for seven years before they can sell something, whereas some of our AI companies might be able to sell a service and have money coming in the door four or six months later. Those are the first things we look at.

When it comes to how long we stay in companies, we are with some of our companies for many years. It is very much the case that we stay on the scaling journey with them. We typically exit a company when it has been acquired through a trade sale, for example. What we try to do with those companies is, first, ensure they stay Irish-owned for as long as possible because they are our future multinationals. The other thing we are always conscious of in Enterprise Ireland is building out their innovation and research and development capabilities as well as building a great leadership team so that if they are acquired by overseas companies, they are used as a fulcrum to grow an even bigger company around them here in Ireland. We have good examples of that over the years. I will invite Mr. McKeown to talk a little bit about our investment solutions, policy and what we are doing on the scaling side.

Mr. Paul McKeown:

With regard to the length of time we are in companies, one of the key differences of having Enterprise Ireland on a capitalisation table is that we are not looking for that quick exit. We are investing because of the developmental agenda. As Ms Melia outlined, we will exit at an appropriate time for the client. To Deputy McCormack’s previous point, we are taking early stage risks so we expect to get pari passu in terms of return to the State on our investment, but we are not there for investment return purposes. As a result, we have had some exits where we have been in a company for more than ten years. We are not there for the short run, unless that is what is appropriate for the client.

The Deputy mentioned AI and we are absolutely seeing more AI investments, both with companies that are pure AI plays and companies that are leveraging AI in whatever sector they are in. We do not pick sectors as part of our investment. We back the companies that come to us. We assess them on an individual basis and make individual investment decisions based on their strength. We undertake a fair bit of due diligence in that regard. We expect contingency, particularly with regard to our tech-type companies increasing AI components and AI-backed start-ups. We have certainly seen that over the last couple of years in particular.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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In the context of the changing environment, I noticed that in the European innovation scoreboard from the European Commission, Ireland scores very well in the area of linkages between companies, including linkages with other multinational companies and research centres around the EU and beyond. When it comes to home-grown intellectual property, however, we are at 54.5% of the EU average, whereas Finland is way ahead, notwithstanding Nokia kind of came and went in some ways. Finland has that innovation. In order to hold and concentrate the wealth in Ireland and create long-term, spin-off jobs, that is a legacy issue for us. Has Enterprise Ireland been trying to address it and get more patents and intellectual developments in Ireland?

Ms Jenny Melia:

We have. A few years back, we introduced some financial supports for companies. We use almost like an escalator mechanism. We provide a small support to get companies started and then when we get them to a certain stage, we provide further funding to help them get to the next stage. We host regular networking and information events for companies as well that bring them through what is involved in protecting their intellectual property. We have great examples of companies that have done that, such as Aerogen, a medical technology company in Galway, and Combilift Forklifts in Monaghan that makes forklifts. One of the first things people see when they walk into those companies is a wall of their patents and the wealth of intellectual property they have created over the last ten or 15 years.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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We are running out of time. I will ask some more questions in the next round.

Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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I apologise for only arriving in; we had votes, etc. I thank the witnesses for being here. I have a question regarding start-up companies. One of the issues with which we dealt before was when we were listening to the founder of Stripe. They said that when they were younger, there were no supports or investment whatsoever. They had to go to the US and now they employ some 6,000 or 8,000 people. How do we ensure that the next Collison brothers who are just finishing school are supported? Are the supports now there so that Stripe could have been started in Ireland?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Senator for his question. I was glad to read a few years ago that the Collison brothers said that if they were starting in Ireland now, they believed they could make a go of Stripe from Ireland and grow the company from here while continuing to raise funding internationally. We are in a different environment now in Ireland with our start-up community and that is why we have a target of 1,000 new start-ups in our five-year strategy by 2030. We are not just looking at the quantum of projects coming through the pipeline, but also the quality. For example, we have a number of initiatives and activities to help entrepreneurs get started.

One of the examples that is widely used around the country is our new frontiers programme which we run out of the technological universities. It allows people to participate locally. One of things that we see that is important with young entrepreneurs coming together is that peer-to-peer learning. We are wrapping more experienced advice around them. For example, in some of the start-up activities that we run now with our multinational companies, we have programmes with Amazon Web Services, AWS, Microsoft and so on, that provide services and supports as well to our start-up companies. It is done through a good structure to ensure there is a framework around it and companies can see the start, middle and end. This is important when they have so many things coming at them.

Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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Ms Melia mentioned about regional employment growth. I am a member of the housing committee. One thing they are always saying is that housing is urban centred and in regional areas that we need to work on that. Ms Melia mentioned that the majority of new jobs are created outside of Dublin. What safeguards are in place to make sure that is kept and does not drift back towards the urban areas? It was a huge issue on the housing committee.

Ms Jenny Melia:

We have a target that two thirds of our new jobs being created every year are in locations outside of Dublin. As my Dublin colleagues always tell me, Dublin is also a region. We have to focus on the Dublin jobs as well. If I look at how we work in Enterprise Ireland, we have a one-to-one relationship with our companies across all the regions through an account manager called a client advisor. We have regional teams in our regional offices around Ireland who are very much focusing on the enterprise eco-system and working with the partners and stakeholders in the region, be that the universities, local enterprise office, whatever clusters we may have set up in the region or central networks that may be operating in the region. In headquarters, we are driving the investment into the regions through investing directly in the companies through training grants, R and D grants, employment grants and more recently over the past three or four years through sustainability and green funding in terms of driving that twin transition towards digital and green across both our manufacturing and tech companies.

Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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Ms Melia mentioned digital. We are all seeing AI. There is an AI committee here. She mentioned intellectual property. Has Enterprise Ireland got a specific arm that deals with start-ups or younger companies to try to promote the use of AI in younger companies?

Ms Jenny Melia:

AI is becoming ubiquitous across our start-up companies. When I looked at projects that were coming to Enterprise Ireland for investment five or six years ago, we would count or tag the number of projects that were coming through with some element of AI. They were either using AI or developing an AI product or service for a customer. Now, it is almost the opposite. Now, we would almost count the projects that do not have some type of an AI element. I saw that about 20 years ago with nanotechnology. I saw that nanotechnology was very much an out there kind of thing. Over the course of three, four or five years, it became ubiquitous. It was in the pharmaceutical industry, semiconductors and so on. People just stopped talking about it and got on with it.

Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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Is it very much a positive?

Ms Jenny Melia:

It is a positive. However, one of the things in terms of our competitiveness agenda and coming back to why we are here today, it is going to be more important than ever that we are upskilling our companies and their workforces are digitally and AI proficient. We surveyed 500 clients last year at our international markets week. Almost nine in ten of those clients told us that they were either using AI or planning to use AI in the business. Our message to all those companies and we will be out with them on one-to-one strategic engagements is that the planning time is over. Now they need to start using it. Between what we are doing directly in Enterprise Ireland and how we are working with our colleagues in SOLAS and Skillnet Ireland, we need to make sure that we are getting the upskilling that we need across the workforce.

Aubrey McCarthy (Independent)
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I live in County Kildare. We have Intel, Pfizer and Procter and Gamble. I am always wary about what happens if Mr. Trump decides to do something different on Monday morning and we lose those key FDIs. What can we do? What are the main barriers to stop Irish-owned firms scaling faster and becoming large global players? At the end of the day, they are the backbone of what we are. The others are there, but it could be temporarily.

Ms Jenny Melia:

The biggest lever that we can use is our scaling lever. There is two parts to that. One is scaling finance. When I talked through our end of year results on Monday, one of things I said was that 2025 was the year of scaling and where I have seen it coming through in Enterprise Ireland with the €49.5 million investment from Enterprise Ireland that leveraged total funding of €440 million. We talked about companies that are in the public domain that have raised funding rounds of €85 million, €60 million and two €30 million rounds back-on-back. We would not have been having that type of conversation ten years ago. It links back to what the Senator said about Stripe and where we were in the funding environment. The other piece that is important is that we are building the talent pool in those companies and the leaders who will bring the company on the scaling journey. Again, that is another card we have to play in Ireland in terms of the quality of tech and the management talent that we have across both our foreign direct companies and our Irish-owned companies.

To the Senator's point, if we see any kind of a wobble in a large company, whether it is Irish-owned or FDI-owned, we will always make our Enterprise Ireland services available. If those companies want us to go in and share with their colleagues how we can help those colleagues who may be leaving the business for strategic reasons or being let go and if they are interested in setting up their own business, we would tell them about what supports we can bring to the table. We would go into those companies and run group clinics, one-to-one clinics or whatever people are comfortable with.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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We are going to suspend for five minutes if the witnesses wish to have a quick break. We will resume for the second round.

Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael)
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I thank everyone for coming in. My apologies for being late, I have an education committee meeting at the same time, so I will be running between the two.

I happened to meet my former employer last Friday night by accident. I was in the drinks industry for about nine years and it was brilliant. The FMCG market was absolutely fantastic to be in. It was more domestic at the time, but now they are a big exporter in the whiskey, gin and cream liquors markets. I asked how things were and my goodness, the answer I got back made my heart go out to them, given the struggles they face

Obviously, the Irish drinks industry is a major exporter, particularly to the US. However, the reintroduction of tariffs has had a massive impact. Reading my notes this morning, it started back in 1997 when there was a zero-for-zero arrangement but now we have these tariffs. I suppose by the time the exporters, distributors and everybody get their bit, there is very little left for any type of profit. Some producers are trying to diversify into other areas in order that they are not really concentrating as much on the US and trade bodies are calling for it to go back to zero-for-zero tariffs. Is Enterprise Ireland specifically helping companies, or what work has been done? Apologies if someone has already asked this question but what work has been done to help people in the drinks industry with what they have been facing in recent months?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Senator. She is the first to ask this question.

As regards some of the changing dynamics we have seen across our drinks companies, as the Senator said, the sales in whiskey have dropped to the US. Companies had moved a lot of stock as quickly as they could into the US as soon as they started to see some of the uncertainty coming through in quarter 1. That is the first thing. We have seen a drop off in whiskey exports but a rise in the cream liquor sector, which is good news and very interesting. We have also seen a drop off in some of the gin products but as there was a wave of new gin brands and so on, it is a very crowded market.

Of the two things we are focusing on with our drinks companies, the first is their research and innovation agenda. One of the bright spots we have seen in the drinks companies is they are meeting the demands of lower alcohol, zero alcohol or drinks with additional health and functionality built into the drinks, which are seeing increases in sales. The other part of the agenda that is very important, particularly with the big drinks companies, is working on their sustainability agenda. I will ask my colleague, Ms Toomey, to come in on this in a few minutes regarding some of the significant projects we have got behind in the past two years, one being the new Diageo brewery down in Kildare. That will have everything but Guinness, which is going to stay in St. James's Gate.

The other piece we are working on with them is helping them bring efficiencies across the business. Of course, in the food and drinks industry, we work very closely with our colleagues in Bord Bia, which works with the companies in the overseas markets on trade promotion and so on. Both Bord Bia and I were at Gulfood last week, which is a very important trade show. The committee will also have seen the news this week in terms of what the tariffs might potentially fall back to now in India with the Indian-EU trade deal going through. Right now, there is a tariff of 150% on Irish whiskey in India, which just makes it unprofitable for our companies.

Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael)
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In respect of efficiencies, if you think of your regular small businesses, we talk here a lot about the cost of doing business. I am a small business owner myself with my husband and I am sure the witnesses have heard from everybody else about auto-enrolment, the increase to minimum wage, higher energy costs and all those types of things.

Those companies, particularly the smaller ones, have the impact of the tariffs, which makes it unmanageable to export to the US now. It is those companies I would like Enterprise Ireland to focus on. It is great for the bigger companies; maybe they can survive a bit longer. Concentrating on plans for smaller businesses would be great. They have the added stress of what is going on and the turbulence in the market. It is disappointing in particular to see whiskey exports decrease because we are known for producing high quality whiskey. Is there a number for how many distilleries closed down in Ireland in the past year?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I want to be clear about the number I am giving but some of the names in the media over the past couple of months include Waterford Distillery, which was a whiskey company that had started in what had been a beer facility.

Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael)
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We had one in Meath as well.

Ms Jenny Melia:

There was also reference to Killarney brewing. There has also been some consolidation in the craft beer sector. Consolidation can be good in the industry in bringing the brand together and making for a bigger partner. Some craft beer companies have consolidated other activities or they are making the product now for the companies. To the Senator's point, we certainly hear from our manufacturing companies about the minimum wage. For the drinks industry, water usage is a huge thing, that is, any impact of water costs on the drinks industry. Our food and drinks companies are heavily regulated for food safety purposes. With all of that regulation comes costs for companies. For the most part, the UK market is still the first jump-off point for our prepared consumer foods and drinks companies. Whiskey was led into the United States by the big players. The Senator is right; we have a premium position there. We are still hopeful there will be a carve-out around whiskey. It is still part of overall discussions around the EU-US framework. I will ask Ms Toomey to comment.

Ms Alexa Toomey:

The Senator called out the challenges our SME clients face across the board but in the drinks sector specifically. To best help them are all of the things Ms Melia already described but it is really about helping them look at their own cost base to protect their margin where they can. We cannot directly do anything to impact the tariffs they face so it is about how we can help them on the other side. The supports are around operational efficiencies for SMEs, looking at their production and bottling lines, seeing if there is anything they can do to increase throughput. On the sustainability side of our supports, there is quite a bit we can do in resource efficiency, that is, whether you can make the same amount of product using less electricity, less water or less grain or whether the grain can be reused in circular or bio-economy projects. We are working with them. In many ways, the innovations we can work on with companies in the whiskey sector are around how they produce and how sustainably they do that. Whiskey is such a protected product - and rightly so - they cannot innovate too much in how it is made. That is where we engage with them. The other Deputies will be sick of hearing me say this but it is about making sure they have the right skills and capability within their management team to really mind their margins and run as efficiently as they can.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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In the opening statement, there was reference to the number of businesses - I think it was 4,500 - under Enterprise Ireland's watch. A target in terms of scale is to have 150 businesses with more than 250 employees. Out of 4,500 businesses, it is a very small percentage in terms of the objective to get to more than 250 employees. What is the challenge for so many businesses not to be able to get to 150, 200 or 250 employees? Where are the bottlenecks?

Ms Jenny Melia:

Putting 150 against 4,500, it looks like a small number of the overall client base. I have been in Enterprise Ireland for almost 30 years. It is so hard for the companies to get over 250. With regard to our very good tech companies in digital technology and medical tech, over the years we have seen them get to a certain size and then they are ripe for acquisition. There may be an international or Irish buyer. Very often, an international buyer buys them when they get to a certain size. They buy their innovation, their team and their intellectual property. A positive thing is we have seen a turnaround in Ireland in the past few years with more Irish companies on the acquisition journey, going out to buy companies to add to their portfolios rather than being the ones to be acquired. On the manufacturing side and on scaling a business, I am very familiar with food and drinks manufacturers and some of our medical technology manufacturers. It involves an increase in premises, building a leadership team that has the skills to scale the business and putting in the right systems and processes at the right time. I can think of one pool of companies where we had seven or eight between €90 million and €100 million. Two got their heads over €100 million over a six-year period. As well as navigating everything else, they are navigating at home, building their team and plant and so on, then they navigate the challenge with customers and eking out a good margin.

John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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The tech sector is ultimately trying to prepare itself for acquisition. We want our Irish companies to be the ones taking over rather than being taken over. On the premises side and manufacturing - I raised this in the committee previously - there is a serious shortage of enterprise parks. In my county, it is difficult to scale at the moment. Going back to my previous contribution, that is one of the points I would like to see further discussion on between Enterprise Ireland and local authorities as to how local authorities can identify land and get them to a serviced site stage so they generate income. There is almost an IDA-like role for Enterprise Ireland in this regard to identify locations where there are serviced sites that can be used to generate rental income and commercial rates capacity to make local authorities more independent from a revenue perspective.

The other question I would like to touch on is the area of consultants. I come from a small business and have seen some of these consultants come in the door. They have no real buy-in. They come in, put a glossy report together and some of the ideas can be off the wall but I am the one left picking up the pieces. They will still get their consultancy fee. Has Enterprise Ireland given thought to whether there is any way we could get greater buy-in from a consultant whereby, rather than getting the full fee upfront, it would be based on the profit of a company 24 months later, just to give them a little bit more of an understanding? A lot of times, whether a small business or entrepreneur goes through either ten or 110 jobs, it can be a lonely and stressful place. There are demands coming at you from every angle and all of sudden someone who has never walked in your shoes walks into your business and tells you how to do it.

I say this with no disrespect to the consultants, who have a job to do. Is there any way we can tie them in in a performance, metrics, pay-related sense? I appreciate the complications with tenders, procurement and so on. Has it ever come up on Enterprise Ireland's radar as to how we could potentially get greater buy-in from them?

Ms Jenny Melia:

Before I deal with the consultants, I wish to go back briefly to the property piece. We work closely with our colleagues in IDA on property. The IDA property team supports Enterprise Ireland if we are looking for a site for a client. Very often clients will want to expand the site they are on and will not want to move to a new enterprise park. If I am talking to a CEO about a company's expansion plans, we will walk around outside the plant and I will ask him who owns adjacent sites and what the arrangements for buying them might be. They will very often want to expand their existing footprint.

Coming back to consultants, when one of our companies talks to us about needing a consultant to do something or if they need expertise, we will advise them to talk to two or three other companies that have done a similar piece of work. We cannot and do not recommend consultants. However, we are very happy for companies to talk to each other and hear about consultants. They might say, "I'd definitely work with them again", "They did a great job" or "They brought so much more to the table than we'd expected". Word of mouth is a huge thing across Irish companies. I would recommend that any company in the situation the Deputy described go to Enterprise Ireland, the national enterprise hub or the local enterprise office and talk about the actual problem it is trying to solve. It will be connected up to two or three others that typically had a similar problem and they will tell the company who they worked with.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Melia for her frank responses so far. Our local enterprise office in Offaly County Council has been a fantastic addition for the business community in Offaly and I am sure the same is true for all local enterprise offices in the country. The jobs they have provided, the mentoring they have done and the vouchers they have given out for setting up websites, etc., have been absolutely fantastic. Enterprise Ireland does a fantastic job but too often people come to me with questions and I have to signpost them either to the local enterprise office or to Enterprise Ireland. How can this be changed so that there is a one-stop shop that people can go to and make it easier for them to get that information rather than having to come to somebody like me?

If people do not make contact with Enterprise Ireland, does it call into companies in the regions to meet with them and offer its services?

Ms Jenny Melia:

I will start with the one-stop shop. I will ask my colleague Ms Toomey to provide some numbers because I want to be sure to give the right number. The national enterprise hub was set up just over 18 months ago to connect companies to 19 different agencies and organisations. That has now expanded to 32 organisations. The hub is the signposting to tell people where to go and explain to them the supports that would be most relevant to their business. My understanding is that 11,000 or 12,000 is the number of companies supported, but I want to get it right for the Deputy. When I went through that number, I found it very interesting that only 10% of those companies were small and medium companies, whereas 90% of them were either micro enterprises or basically a sole trader. The hub has done what it says on the tin in doing that signposting.

The Deputy asked if we are out on the ground constantly visiting companies and making sure that we understand their needs and so on. We are. We have a team of just over 100 colleagues working across our three sectors: the tech and services sector; the industrial and life sciences sector; and the food, drinks and sustainability sector.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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That is for Enterprise Ireland's existing clients.

Ms Jenny Melia:

That is with our existing clients.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Is Enterprise Ireland cold-calling companies? There may be good indigenous companies with the potential to export that have never gone into it because they feel it is too big a job. However, if they had support from an organisation like Enterprise Ireland to talk them through step by step and support them financially in different ways, they might venture into that and be able to export as well. However, they never see themselves in that space and therefore do not look at Enterprise Ireland as somewhere they should go or may not even consider exporting to.

Ms Jenny Melia:

The next conversation we typically have is with the local enterprise offices. I believe they have something like 7,200 companies on their portfolio. We regularly have conversations through our local enterprise office teams. They are not just connecting with the office in East Point but also with the regional teams on the ground, our teams in Waterford, Athlone, Galway and so on. In my years with Enterprise Ireland, I have come across a number of companies that do not have a relationship with a local enterprise office, a consultant that has done some business in the system, or one of our universities or technological universities. They are typically the channels through which they will come into us.

They can come into us at any level in the organisation. Sometimes people will come to me directly, to Ms Toomey or to our divisional managers. I still take calls from people in companies I worked with directly in 2012 or 2013 who are looking to set up a conversation between Enterprise Ireland and another entrepreneur in their region. Through all our communication channels it is important for us to constantly get the message out there that we are open for business and that people should come to talk to us. It is not about knowing exactly what support a company needs. It is about sitting down with us and letting us help them articulate the problem they are trying to solve and from that we will work with them to create the solution.

Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael)
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I wish to follow on from Deputy McCormack's point. I appreciate that Enterprise Ireland feels that it has done a good signposting job with the national enterprise hub. However, I know that small businesses still do not know where to go. I think that is what Deputy McCormack was trying to say. I was part of the SME task force that came up with the idea of the one-stop shop. I am blue in the face trying to tell people to go to the national enterprise hub, even sitting on the phone and looking it up to see what supports can be given to people. We have a lot when it comes to energy, refrigeration, lights and mentorship. We took away the web grant of up to €2,500 and we changed it to the digital strategy. It was just easier previously when people went to their local enterprise office and knew they could get something towards their website.

I recognise that what Enterprise Ireland is trying to do is to realise that the retail and commercial side of things is ever-changing and people need to have a strategy as opposed to just sticking up a website. However, it is not hitting home with people. I totally appreciate the work Enterprise Ireland has done and am definitely not criticising it. Like Deputy McCormack, however, I am a strong advocate for small businesses and they just do not know where to go. When they go onto that hub, it does not suit what they need. I have raised this with the Minister, Deputy Burke, and the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon.

I am sure Deputy McCormack gets questions, as I do, from people with a great idea to start a business, wondering what is there for them. The answer is that there is nothing. There is a bit of mentorship and maybe a bit of help with a website in the future. I am not referring to pharmaceutical manufacturing and exporting but to someone who might have a dream.

I have been a long time in business. You might start off with your dream, but you get so consumed with everything in admin, HR and looking after the accounts that the dream starts to fade and you get bogged down. Therefore, people are not given the opportunity to think about what they can do to improve their business or expand it. That is where very small businesses are missing the help. They genuinely do not know where to go.

That is why I agree with Deputy McCormack about eyes on the ground. I had an idea that I presented a couple of years ago. There are two issues. First, everyone who starts a business should do a one-day start-your-own-business course. I think that would be a reality check. People have this great idea, but there are a lot of things that they need to be able to figure out, and they need to know someone is there to help them. Second, when a company is registered with the CRO, a letter should go out from Enterprise Ireland to say, “Well done for starting the business”, or “Fair play to you. The more small businesses there are in Ireland, the better.” It should say that because the person has started their business, Enterprise Ireland is there to help them, and here is a pen with its telephone number or email address on it, and some sort of little pack that says, “We're here. We've got your back. We're so happy you've set up a business in Ireland, and now we're going to support you.” That is what we are missing. They just do not feel that support.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I thank the Senator for sharing that. We will certainly take back the comments regarding the hub, but also the message on the start-your-own-business supports that are available through the local enterprise offices. That is just it. The new policy that was introduced in 2024 widened the mandate of the local enterprise offices, so we have to do more to get that message out there.

Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael)
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We have opened the Thrive centre in County Meath, which I am sure Ms Melia is aware of. We now have a purpose-built building, with experts there, where businesses can go. Again, I do not imagine many other counties would have that. Where do they go? When people go to start their own business, what happens next? I think we need to help in that area.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I love the Senator's idea of the notification going out when someone has registered a business.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I love this committee because there is such a range of views and perspectives. There is great corporate and business experience on the committee, as well as those like me. I am only 28, and I come at it from a different angle. Even as a TD, I have many constituents coming in to me who want to start businesses, and they seek advice on where to go, and so on. There is always that conundrum whereby not everyone is able to succeed, and how Enterprise Ireland should handle that as a very important State agency.

I have a couple of reflections. I compliment the work that Enterprise Ireland's team is doing internationally. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of them in the United States, and the committee was in Japan recently. The reports are very good from people who have engaged, and people are very proud of working with Enterprise Ireland. It is getting to a scale where Enterprise Ireland is key to their business. I want to compliment that.

I would appreciate it if it were possible to sit down at some stage to discuss the proposal that I brought to some of my colleagues who sit in Cabinet with regard to having a start-up hub nationally, and having significant investment in that respect.

As a committee, it would be great if, at some point, we could visit the Enterprise Ireland offices as a courtesy visit. We also said that to the Secretary General of the Department, and we hope to do it with the IDA as well. I very much appreciate the witnesses’ time.

There is a question that I always ask when we have witnesses before us. In terms of her frustrations, is there anything that Ms Melia wants to tell the committee about what it is like dealing with the structural barriers that might be in the way of Enterprise Ireland, and to give us some advice for when we are speaking to the Minister or the Department about things she might like to see being done? Is there anything that she would like to see highlighted on behalf of the agency? It is difficult to criticise when she is the chief executive of a State agency, but there might be some insight that she wishes to share with us and that she feels might be prudent or wise for us to raise.

Ms Jenny Melia:

I had a short list of asks that I cannot put my hand on, but I am very happy to rattle off what I can remember. I thank the committee members for taking the time today. It is clear there is a breadth of expertise and a deep interest in local enterprise and SMEs, which is so important to us in Enterprise Ireland.

First, we would be very happy to host the committee at some stage in Enterprise Ireland, and we will follow up with the committee separately on that. What would be very helpful for us concerns how we get our message out to the committee members’ colleagues. What is a good opportunity or a good forum for us to be able to go in and have some of our colleagues meet with their colleagues, explain how we work in Enterprise Ireland and, again, how we link in to other partners across the ecosystem, and keep all of those communication channels open and moving? That is the first thing.

The second ask concerns whatever policies or regulations the committee members and their colleagues will be working on to keep the SME at the heart of the conversation when they are looking to do something. What I always say is that the typical SME that I see in Enterprise Ireland is a small engineering company with 30 people and two managers, doing maybe €3 million in business, exporting about a third of that into the UK, working so hard and making a profit of about €150,000 or €200,000 a year. They do not pay themselves terribly well, and they do not take a lot of money out of the business. If members have that picture in their heads when policies and legislation are going through, that would be very helpful.

The third piece for us is around our entrepreneurs. This goes back to some of the questions the Cathaoirleach was asking about how we make Ireland even better than it is, because we have done so much in the start-up environment. We have a number of things that we will always put forward with our pre-budget submission. The types of things we focus on are what kinds of incentives we can build around our entrepreneurs to help them hire better, and hire people who probably will cost more, but bring that scaling experience to the business they need. The second thing is how we make better use of finance in Ireland to drive our SMEs. We look at all of the work we are doing around our scaling fund and so on, but what is the potential to go further through things like our investment funds and savings funds? We know that will be an important part of the EU Presidency as well. That is a European discussion, as well as an Irish discussion.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I am sorry to interrupt. On that point, regulatory sandboxing is very interesting, and it comes up quite regularly. It is not fair of me to ask a question, given the amount of time I have left. When we meet in person, it might be no harm to touch on that, particularly with the Presidency coming up. The committee has rightly focused on competitiveness issues. I believe that will be one of the strands taken on for the Presidency, so we are a little ahead of our time. Ms Melia's insights from her work are invaluable in respect of that. I appreciate that information.

I have cut across Ms Melia, but I had better move on to Deputy Gogarty.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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That Ms Melia is standing up for the small person in the SME has been noted. In metaphorical terms, all I can say is she is still Jenny from the Block. She has not got any high notions.

Ms Jenny Melia:

That is the first time that has been said.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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That is good. She is focused on her core area. I have a couple of questions on the core area. Another statistic I found is that domestic labour productivity in Ireland grew by 30% over 20 years, but in foreign-owned firms, it was four times that figure. There is a suggestion with regard to SME exports, and we were talking about that manufacturing company exporting to the UK. I know Enterprise Ireland is trying to diversify and look at new markets, but as it stands, 60% or 65% of SMEs are still catering for the much smaller domestic market. What plans does Enterprise Ireland have to increase the export potential? That is my first question.

Ms Jenny Melia:

We are just at the early stages of launching our new exporters programme. We have a target to bring 1,700 new exporters into the portfolio through both Enterprise Ireland and our colleagues in the local enterprise offices. Sometimes when we look at the companies, even the established companies, they reach some kind of a pivot point in their growth journey. It can be a change in their management team or a change in a market opportunity.

They have put in place a good business in Ireland with good solid foundations, and now the time is right for them to look at export markets. Over the years I have seen companies, particularly on the manufacturing side, that maybe jumped that little bit too fast and it cost them money because they had not done all of their research beforehand. It is really important for us in Enterprise Ireland that, through something like the new exporter programme, we are building all of the smarts, expertise and playbooks to help them do it properly.

When I look at our five-year strategy to take us out to 2029, we have a target that 40% of our exports will go into Europe. We had a very interesting series of firsts last year, in terms of Europe overtaking the UK and the UK still going beyond €10 billion. I thank the Cathaoirleach for his praise for our international teams, who really are a jewel in the crown in Enterprise Ireland. One of the things we work really hard to do is to increase the value of our exports while we also increase the diversity. I will give a flavour of this. When I look at what we were doing in 2015, we were 35% dependent on the UK. Last year, we brought that dependence down to 29% but we also increased the value of our exports by 50%. We will always try to do the two in tandem. This is exactly our game plan for Europe, with 40% of exports going into Europe. We think the opportunity is there to win another €1 billion in the US, and some of our companies are very closely involved in building out some of the critical infrastructure in the US in advanced pharmaceuticals and the data centre industry. We are still looking to the UK. We see great opportunities to do more business in the UK. This will form part of our trade mission agenda in 2026, in conjunction with our colleagues in IDA Ireland and our colleagues in the Department of foreign affairs.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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On a related issue to do with competitiveness, I raised previously the fact that many software companies, even though IDA Ireland wants them to move around the country, all want to come into Dublin. This means a lot of people who come from abroad are putting pressure on the housing market in Dublin. The same thing applies domestically. It costs a lot for people to commute in and out of Dublin if the jobs are in Dublin. A total of 69% of new jobs are created outside of Dublin but Dublin has 28% of the population. It still needs to push up. Is Enterprise Ireland actively pushing for companies around the country and, in terms of Dublin, trying to get some of those in west Dublin and some of the commuter towns to head towards companies in the midlands? They would then not add to traffic congestion, and the pressure for buying houses in those areas would be lessened. When the costs are lower, it might encourage more people to work there. Has this spatial approach informed Enterprise Ireland in more recent years or does Ms Melia think it should?

Ms Jenny Melia:

It absolutely does and I will give an example. When what we will call urban companies, whether in Dublin, Cork or Galway, are looking to expand their footprint, one of the things we will look at is the opportunity for a second site. We will go around the country with them, with support from our colleagues in IDA Ireland, to where we know there are properties available. We have companies that now have two sites in Ireland, and this works for them in terms of the talent dynamics. Some of their workforce want to be in the middle of a city centre and others in the workforce want to be out surfing at 6.30 p.m.-----

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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The work-life balance.

Ms Jenny Melia:

-----and living on the west coast. I was once heading to Athlone to a meeting at which we were bringing all of our regional team together. When I was driving through Portarlington, mine was the only car heading in my direction while 14 cars were going the other way. I said to the team that morning that this was why our job was so important, in terms of being constantly focused on the regions. It is so that we do not have everybody driving out of Portarlington onto the M7 but to have people going the other way as well.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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Exactly. I thank Ms Melia for her contribution.

Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Gogarty and I assure people that Deputy Clendennen and I are not bullying people into supporting the midlands and County Offaly.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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There is a line from a song but I will not start reading out lyrics. I thank very much our witnesses from Enterprise Ireland. This has been a very informative discussion and everybody has taken value from it. We look forward to engaging with Enterprise Ireland in future. I thank the chief executive, and wish her well in her new role, and her team of Mr. McKeown and Ms Toomey for being here.

St Brigid’s Day on February 1 signals the beginning of spring and an end to the darkness of winter, ushering in a new season of hope and growth on the land and the birth of animals on the farm and in the wild.

That is a nice quote from Clodagh Doyle, who is keeper of the Irish folklife collection of the National Museum of Ireland. I wish all the committee team, and those tuning in to what we are discussing, a very happy St. Brigid's Day and wish them well. I hope everyone has a nice long weekend.