James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am standing in for Deputy Devlin, who is as láthair at the moment with Covid, unfortunately.

One of the items that was reviewed in the report was the export credit insurance scheme, and it is one I am particularly interested in. I believe that one of the deliverables of the task force is to look at ways to motivate the export journey for SMEs. I know the local enterprise centres have always had a focus on export growth as an opportunity for SMEs. However, there is an issue about the export credit insurance scheme. It was planned to monitor, improve and review that over the last year and going forward. However, I am not sure how that is going and I know some concerns have been raised within the industry. The Minister of State might update the House on the progress in that regard.

The Minister of State mentioned the high-performance small companies scheme. There is great opportunity within that for incubators. I know the MERITS hub in Naas in my own constituency has a lot of hot-desking and innovation and that is replicated around the country. I would be very interested in having supports for those types of activities as well.

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