Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

The manufacturing sector — both indigenous and foreign-owned — has been a key component of the economy over the past two decades and it will continue to be a significant contributor to exports, employment and economic growth in the future. Home based enterprises play a significant part in the sector, and the Government is encouraging the development of that element of the economy.

Continuing the economic success of recent years will require indigenous enterprises to overcome complex new challenges and harness a range of new opportunities. Among those challenges are the need for improved management skills, the need to develop international marketing and sales capabilities, the need to exploit state of the art technology and business processes, and the need to forge strategic alliances and partnerships.

Enterprise policy is being actively refocused towards creating conditions that will make possible a sustained shift to higher skilled, knowledge-intensive activities and in which advanced manufacturing expertise will be an important contributor to growth and employment. To that end, in 2005, Enterprise Ireland launched Transforming Irish Industry, its strategy aimed at strengthening indigenous industry. The strategy runs from 2005 to 2008 and Enterprise Ireland will be soon evaluating its impact as it formulates strategy for the period 2008-12.

Enterprise Ireland's effort in this regard will be underpinned by the supports provided by the county and city enterprise boards. The role of the CEBs in helping to generate a strong culture of entrepreneurship and the creation of new businesses is important in its own right as a generator of wealth and employment at local level, but its role in the development of the seed corn from which high growth indigenous enterprises can emerge is also critical.

In 2005, I established the Small Business Forum. The objectives of the forum were to examine the barriers inhibiting small businesses, that is, those with less than 50 employees, identify how those could be addressed and outline measures to assist those businesses to grow and flourish. The forum delivered its findings in April of this year, making recommendations in the areas of reducing the burden of regulation and local authority charges; broadening access to finance; enhancing management capability; stimulating innovation; and driving the adoption of ICT.

To assist industry maintain competitiveness and increase productivity, the economic development agencies are working on an ongoing basis to promote the adoption of new technology and best practice at company level. The agencies provide mentoring and developmental supports to enhance management capabilities and build critical workforce skills in client companies; support the creation and implementation of strategies for market entry, development and growth; and provide strong supports for innovation and research and development.

My Department's strategy is to maximise export sales through the utilisation of applied research, technology and innovation while ensuring economic development is achieved in a regionally balanced fashion. This is reflected in changes to tax rules to encourage more research and development activity to take place here, particularly in the area of high value added and customer driven innovation.

The recently concluded social partnership agreement, Towards 2016, also acknowledges the importance of the manufacturing sector with an agreement to establish a high-level manufacturing group to review the challenges facing the manufacturing sector and identify further measures to meet these challenges. Officials in my Department are currently working on the establishment of this group and I hope to be in a position to make an announcement on the make up of the high-level group very soon.

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