Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Businesses are in trouble today. The conversation on state-aid rules needs to happen today. We have had three Ministers for Business, Enterprise and Innovation in the past five months. I am yet to see a coherent and substantial response. I accept that Enterprise Ireland is helping a few hundred companies, but that is not enough. The Tánaiste spoke about 38,000 Irish companies, but I remind him that 90,000 such companies are importing and exporting from the UK. Tens of thousands of other companies will be indirectly affected by Brexit. The UK is a big economy. I think it is the sixth biggest economy in the world. The economy of the 26 other remaining member states is five times bigger than the UK economy. Our level of market penetration in those 26 member states is one ninth the size of our market penetration in the UK. The opportunity is there, but it is just not good enough to say we will need to know what the final shape of Brexit is before we get serious. We have to start getting our firms exporting out to the 26 member states that are remaining in the EU. The Tánaiste and I are aware that, regardless of what happens, Brexit will make it much more difficult for our firms to trade with the UK.

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