Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcomed the policy statement on entrepreneurship at the time, but when another wing of the Minister of State's Department, the National Competitiveness Council, published the Irish competitiveness scorecard in 2015, it said that "elements of Ireland’s environment for entrepreneurship are relatively poor in an international competitiveness context; in particular, reducing the time and complexity of procedures associated with enterprise start-up". That was published some nine months after the enterprise strategy was published.

Second, the small business review group identified several issues. One of them, as the Minister will remember from his time as chairman of the enterprise committee, was the whole area of personal guarantees and the continued insistence of banks on personal guarantees from entrepreneurs who want to start up a business or grow a company. Has there been any action on that? I recall the Minister of State once described as archaic the fact that we are one of the few countries in the world that still insist on people doing that. What is the position on the proposed change in bankruptcy laws? Will it be done before the Government finishes up?

The Minister of State will know that I am really passionate about the area of entrepreneurship in education and I welcome the young entrepreneur programme. That has taken off very well and I see it invading schools in the same way the green flag project has done for the environment in schools. In terms of the curriculum review of entrepreneurship in schools, it cannot be taught; it must be fostered. The practicals, the encouragement and the experience of entrepreneurship cannot be learned from a book or learned by rote. It must be fostered and created. What supports are both the Minister of State's Departments putting in place to get some sort of cohesive sense of fostering an entrepreneurship culture in our schools?

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