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

It is important that we emphasise the point that the Irish economic growth story is not just based on attracting large multinational companies and helping them to grow global businesses out of Ireland. This is a very important part of the Irish economy but the mainstay of employment in Ireland is Irish SMEs and family companies across the country. We must ensure that we support them and that there is a strong enterprise-based policy coming out of Government which allows them to grow and thrive. That is the core of the Irish economy and it is strong at the moment but it needs to focus constantly on evolving, modernising and changing.

There is a big focus at the moment on both decarbonisation and digitalisation of many of those businesses. There is much grant aid, mentoring and low-cost finance available to help companies to do that.

There are also centres of excellence which the Government has invested in, like the National Institute of Bioprocessing Research and Training, NIBRT, and Advanced Manufacturing Ireland which are there to work with multinationals and Irish companies in shared facilities which the State has invested in to ensure that we are developing through innovation some of the most advanced manufacturing practices in the world. Again, there is much interest in that, both from dynamic Irish companies and from multinationals working together.

There is a lot happening in this space but one of the advantages of being a small economy like Ireland is that one can actually change and adapt to new realities quickly and we have been very good at that in responding to some of the global pressures and trends we have seen in the past number of years.

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