Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I share the Minister of State's objective but the challenge for small Irish companies is funding. The funding for county enterprise boards in 2013 was €18 million, while IDA client companies received €89 million. That €89 million is well spent but the figure will have to be considerably higher if we want to see more companies of the type that the Minister of State encountered yesterday. I followed his Twitter feed as he described several very innovative companies. They will be starved of resources, however. The local enterprise offices are the most anticipated development since I do not know when but, while I know the Minister of State is personally committed to ensuring they will deliver, when we revisit the issue this time next year I hope that some of the recommendations from the entrepreneurship forum that do not require legislative change will have been implemented without delay as a statement of intent on the part of the Government that it is taking the report and, more important, the people who compiled it seriously. It could, for example, accept our proposal on shared paternity leave.

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