Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Those are very broad questions. I am just trying to think of how I can give the Deputy an answer in a minute. I assure her the islands will not be forgotten in an enterprise strategy. I also assure her that small family-run businesses across County Galway and Galway city are very much part of our enterprise strategy. They, too, need to be part of a transition to a decarbonised economy and a move towards a digital-based economy. We need to help them do so. That is one of the reasons we changed the remit of the local enterprise offices, for example. Up until the end of last year, local enterprise offices could deal only with companies with fewer than ten staff. They can now deal with companies with between ten and 50 staff, which covers the vast majority of SMEs across the country. It will involve a huge additional workload for local enterprise offices. We need to staff them and fund them accordingly. There is a suite of support measures and grant-aid systems. There is mentoring and a very successful Skillnet programme, which we want Irish companies to be engaged in to upskill themselves. There is a considerable suite of measures.

The White Paper was launched only in December, so it is only a couple of months old. We do not even have the first implementation plan in place yet. Therefore, there is a job of work to do to get the narrative out, and that is why we are holding nine regional business conferences around the country, the first of which will start next Friday morning in Letterkenny. We will be taking the narrative out to the country to speak to businesses and work it out with them.

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