Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The idea of a new agency is certainly something I have an open mind on. A lot of business people I talk to say they feel there is a gap. When a business is very small, it can get help from the local enterprise offices and, when it is a bit larger or is an exporter, from Enterprise Ireland, but there is a gap in between. The question is whether we fill that gap by expanding the role of Enterprise Ireland or the local enterprise offices or whether we set up a new agency to fill the gap. There is an important constraint we need to bear in mind here. When we are attracting FDI into Ireland, we are competing with Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, London and other places. When we are helping an exporter to export, it is generally competing with other companies abroad. An indigenous company, however, is very often competing with a company in the same town, two towns over or in the same county, and we must be very careful to not use taxpayers' money in the form of State aid to help one business to take business off another when both are in the same town or county. That is why there is often a constraint on what we can or should do.

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