Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Our major thrust in terms of developing enterprise in indigenous enterprise and SMEs has been to develop the services side of the equation, while supporting high end manufacturing underpinned by indigenous research and development within Irish manufacturing companies. There is a significant drive, on the services side, to inform companies of the opportunities worldwide, not just in the European market. We have made rapid progress and Ireland's share of worldwide services has increased to approximately 2.2% from about 0.5% in 1999.

Enterprise Ireland is promoting investment and development in the services sector in the client companies with which it deals. At a micro level the work of the Small Business Forum will inform some of the work of the county and city enterprise boards in terms of developing innovation. Some reports indicate that we are lacking productivity and competitiveness in the domestic services sector. We will try to achieve more innovation in this area through the implementation of aspects of the Small Business Forum's recommendations.

On the European Internal Market, we are not holding our breath in terms of the impact of the new services directive. We think it is a fairly neutered measure at best and its impact will not be fundamental. We will seek to exploit opportunities in the Internal Market. In the region of €200 million could be added, which is significant for SMEs, but our assessment is that it may not represent the Holy Grail that might have been originally suggested. Commissioner McCreevy felt it was important to implement a services directive to begin the journey to a more liberalised EU market. We have supported this outlook and will continue to provide supports in the form of trade missions, soft supports, mentoring supports and research and development supports to companies engaged in exploiting services markets worldwide.

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