Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation and I congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment to this particular Department. I have no doubt that he will do exceptionally well there. I wish him the best of luck in the Department.

The big focus for many of us is local business. These are the companies that are not exporting. They are not big American multinationals but they are the lifeblood of the economy in places right across the regions. These companies employ 58% of the total workforce, or the total number of people who are paying tax. Many of them have been badly hit as a result of Covid-19 and it is a considerable challenge for them now to try to redesign their way of operating.

As the Minister of State will be aware, in my previous life as Minister I actively promoted a Government scheme called the trading online voucher in order to try to get businesses to start trading online. I commend the Government on increasing the grant rate in this regard, from 50% up to 90%, and there has been a phenomenal take-up of that voucher. The take-up has been a phenomenal for a number of reasons. First, businesses and businesspeople were not working. They had time to carry out a little more research than would have been the case when there were working day to day in trying to keep money coming through the door and many of them researched this trading online voucher. The fact that there was a 90% grant absolutely made it attractive. However, what has been most frustrating is that this grant has dried up. The reason it has dried up is because the funding is not being made available, through the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, to the local enterprise offices. The offices have already drawn down their full allocation for this year. A supplementary allocation was given to the local enterprise offices for the trading online voucher but all of that was drawn down immediately. Even counties such as Roscommon and Galway, for example, which would not be the biggest counties in terms of SMEs, have waiting lists of people who have gone through the training process, have been approved for a grant and are now waiting for that grant to be paid.

We cannot allow this to continue because these businesses need to redesign what they are doing. They need to reinvent themselves and their doing so should not be dependent on a very small amount of grant aid that is being made available. That single investment of up to €2,500 could be the difference between a company staying afloat or not and redesigning how it delivers for its customers. For very little money, we can have a dramatic impact on the viability of many businesses across this country.

I accept that we are talking about providing credit. There has been much debate about the interest rate for that credit, but here is something that is a phenomenal success. The data has shown that anyone who has availed of the voucher in the past has seen their number of employees increase. This is an absolute no-brainer and yet Government is holding this scheme by the neck and not allowing it to grow because it will not put a small amount of money into it. It is farcical to talk about an economic stimulus in three weeks' time if we are holding every business that wants to redesign itself by the neck and saying that it cannot grow and develop because we are not prepared to give it the €2,500 grant. The same applies to microfinance. It is all well and good but, as the Minister of State knows well, many businesses out there do not want to borrow. Here we have an opportunity to incentivise the redesign of how they deliver their business with a small grant and yet we are not prepared to give them that grant.

In addition, we cannot even make the online course available to them in order that they can do the training. The decision has been taken that we will strangle this particular scheme now and will not let people do the online course so that they would be eligible for the grant. The studies have shown that 50% of people who do the online course find that they already have the existing infrastructure in place, they do not need to develop a new online trading platform and they can utilise the tools they have at present. We are strangling those particular businesses as well because we are not giving them access to that course. These are the basic fundamentals that can have a significant impact tomorrow morning on redesigning our economy post Covid and allowing companies to survive.

The reason I am so animated about this scheme is that the figures relating to the analysis that has already been carried out show that this is probably one of the most successful grant schemes ever introduced in the State.

The figures I will give are pre-Covid-19, brought up to date using research carried out roughly to give the current figures based on the growth in online trading. On average, pre-Covid-19, Irish people were spending €21,000 every minute online. The difficulty is that €14,000 a minute of that money was being spent on goods and services outside of Ireland. Straightaway, a huge market is available there to Irish businesses if they can start trading online. Roughly one third of Irish businesses are trading online, so there is a great opportunity to grow that area, and about one fifth of businesses are selling online overseas. There is a massive opportunity to meet domestic demand and to start to trade internationally, without having to go through an Enterprise Ireland office in France, Germany or somewhere else. This is small money to start getting businesses trading online and thinking about new opportunities for growth.

Pre-Covid-19, about two thirds of people in this country were purchasing goods and services online. Naturally enough, that has increased dramatically during the Covid-19 crisis. Figures show that 90% of people will research a product online before buying it. They may not buy that product online, but they will research it online. From analysis of Irish people, what is interesting is that they will pay more to buy a product locally rather than internationally. The reason is that the quality of a product is guaranteed. If there is a problem with the product, it is easy physically to bring it back to a local business rather than having to put it in the post and send it halfway across the world.

People are prepared to buy locally online. The difficulty is that we are not giving those businesses the opportunity to have their shops open online and that is because the Government has decided that the quota has been hit for this year, regardless of Covid-19, and those businesses will have to wait until next year to start trading online. Yet, we will spend the next couple of weeks bringing in new legislation, schemes and initiatives that will be full of bureaucracy and red tape and will take months to implement and of which businesses may not then avail. The online trading voucher scheme, however, has been a phenomenal success, but we are not prepared to put in a small amount of money to transform businesses right across the country. I appeal to the Minister of State, therefore, to get the finger out and ensure funding is put in place for this scheme. It has been a great success - a proven success - and it has the ability to transform absolutely the delivery of services in this country.

While I am discussing the trading online voucher scheme, until now businesses such as restaurants were not allowed to avail of it. I know of one local business in Roscommon town, The Good Place cafe, which has developed its own app. It has been a phenomenal success during the Covid-19 crisis and has allowed people to order and pay for their products online and collect them at the door. If that business has been able to stay above water by making an app available, surely we should be facilitating other businesses and services to do the same thing. The focus has to be on trying to keep people in employment and the biggest challenge in doing that will be the services sector. Again, for a small grant of €2,500 we can keep four, five or six people employed in these businesses and yet we are not prepared to release the money to do that. I hope that before the end of this month we will see the money being provided in a substantial way, not piecemeal or drip fed, to allow the trading online voucher courses to continue and allow people to draw down those grants as quickly as possible.

The second issue I want to raise concerns the 138 different State agencies that taxpayers are funding to support small businesses. We have 35 Government agencies, 31 local authorities, 49 local development companies and 31 enterprise offices. All of them are providing some type of support to SMEs. Is it any wonder that businesses are confused about the supports that exist and are available to them? Every opportunity I get I actively encourage businesses to go on the www.supportingsmes.gov.iewebsite, access the small business tool, put in the details of their business and quickly find out what supports and grants are available. Not enough businesses, however, are filling out that online tool. We need to start working with the businesses that are not doing that. The Government will advertise, but advertisement has not worked to date. The Government will use seminars, but seminars have not worked to date either, because the people whom we need to use that online tool are the very ones who will not attend those seminars.

In fairness to the Government, there is a huge range of supports, including grants, advice and access to capital in various forms. I will make a suggestion to the Minister of State, however. As he knows, the LEADER companies across the country are winding down and the funding available to the rural development Vote in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is also winding down. We have a huge cohort of staff there who have great skills in working with small, indigenous businesses. I suggest we redeploy those staff, and any other staff within Government agencies who may be surplus to requirements at the moment as a result of Covid-19, and that they go individually, door-to-door to these businesses, sit down with them, fill out the online SME tool and support those businesses in applying for the various grants and supports available.

I suggest that because I think this is the single biggest weakness we have now. We can bring forward all the legislation we like in the next weeks and months to support businesses, but the ones that are going to come for help are the ones where it is now too late because they are already about to close their doors or are not prepared to reopen them. Staff in the LEADER companies across the country should be going to those businesses and knocking on their doors. They should sit down with those employers or self-employed people, go through the SME online tool, fill it out with them, identify what supports are available and assist those businesses in applying for and drawing down those supports.

The accessibility of these supports is a fundamental problem. We have a listening ear among businesses, but they do not know where to start. Many of the people involved may not be tech literate, yet these are the businesses we need to ensure are able to survive post-Covid-19. Loans are fine and I welcome this legislation. There has been debate regarding the interest rate being charged, but my and the Minister of State's engagement with businesses across the region has shown they do not want to get into further debt. Many of those businesses cannot afford to get into further debt and many are looking at an uncertain future.

They are weighing up whether they should open their doors. They are also wondering whether they should re-employ the same number of staff and how to lay off staff. A phenomenal number of businesses are getting human resource advice on how to lay off staff.

Yet we are not prepared to spend a very small amount of money on informing people that there are supports, that advice and resources put in place by the Government are available to them as businesses, and that we are prepared to work through those with them and give them the advice they need. Do not wait for those businesses to close their doors. Do not wait for them to knock on the door. Let us get out there and meet them face to face. Let us sit down with them and fill out those online tools. Let us assist them in applying for the various supports that are available, and there are many. The Minister of State will be amazed at the number of businesses that will go to the wall in six months because they did not avail of the restart grant or the rates waiver because they were unaware of them. We cannot afford to do that. We cannot afford to have people become unemployed because they did not access all of the available supports.

New legislation is welcome and we in the Regional Group will assist Government in bringing it forward. However, let us utilise what we have at the moment. Let us support our existing businesses and dedicated and loyal employers to avail of the financial supports already in place. Let us maximise the utilisation of those in the short term, and then explain to them how they can grow and develop their business with these new incentives.

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