Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)

While I thank the Minister of State for the reply, it is not exactly what I wanted. I believe he missed the point of my question, which I have asked repeatedly in the past 18 months. What different instructions has he given to our enterprise development agencies and bodies to cater for the problems we have now? I accept the county and city enterprise boards have done wonderful work, but there is now a change of circumstances. We need to move to protect jobs and help many of these companies to survive. The county and city enterprise boards can only help a small number of companies. Enterprise Ireland deals with approximately 3,500 companies a year and I accept that over five years that could be 15,000 companies. However, many companies are not getting help. We had a good discussion about this at a committee meeting during the week. I believe everyone agrees a large number of companies do not get help. What is the Government prepared to do differently to help those who need help? I accept that an excellent job was done in the past, but at present businesses are closing and jobs are being lost because we do not have a job-sustaining strategy. Many businesses cannot get help from anybody. What is to be done for them?

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