Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

Yes, to set up one's business again. Enterprise Ireland is giving grants to companies in terms of human resources, research and development and so on but, thanks to development levies, those grants are increasingly going from one State agency to the county manager. Through the Small Business Forum, we made strong representations to the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government that resulted in new guidelines being issued to local authorities. However, even the high level group on manufacturing, which will shortly engage with the social partners, is highlighting the issue of local authority development levies and their impact on business and manufacturing.

There was a time when local authorities hunted for business and jobs. They also sought meetings with me, which is still the case, but there is a mismatch between that aspiration and policy objective and the reality on the ground in terms of planning, development levies and the overall attitude to business, which is no longer as pro-enterprise as I, as Minister, would like it to be. This is particularly the case in rural Ireland, where we need to facilitate rather than penalise the traditional enterprises that have thrived for a long time. This is a concern I share with my Government colleagues and we set up an interdepartmental group to activate the work of the Enterprise Strategy Group report and the Small Business Forum to determine whether we can get a more collective opinion on competitiveness in enterprise.

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