Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on budget 2024. While some of the measures in the package announced on Tuesday are welcome, it is clear that the budget has short-changed SMEs. The main announcement for business in budget 2024 was a €250 million package of temporary supports to deal with cost-of-living pressures. It is regrettable that two days on from the budget, we still have no detail about what exactly that is going to entail. In issuing a cautious welcome, I want to say that on my reading of it, it falls short. I would not ask the House to take my word for it, however. ISME has said that the supports average out at about €1,923 per business and it remains to be seen if this will be sufficient. This point is reinforced by the fact that the scheme is being funded from the underspend from TBESS, which has spent just 9% of its €1.3 billion budget. As of August 2023, just €117 million in claims have been approved and just €111 million has been paid out. Therefore, SMEs have a right to ask where the rest of that money is, and why it is not being used to support them. Sinn Féin has long called for the full use of the €1.3 billion fund to support SMEs. The money is still on the Department's books. The Minister could have reprofiled and redistributed the funding before the budget. There was no need to wait for the budget. Given that insolvencies increased by 38% across the first three quarters of the year, the Minister should explain why he did not utilise this fund over the past ten months to support businesses which are struggling. That is not to say that every single one of them could have been saved but a good proportion of them could. It seems that the money was sitting there but due to inertia or incompetence, it was not spent. As a result of the Government's failure to design a scheme which businesses could access, this money remained unspent even thought there are areas where it could have been usefully deployed. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment must also explain to the SME sector where the rest of this TBESS underspend of around €850 million is going to go.

SMEs particularly needed support in budget 2024 to help with the transition to green and digital, as well as supports for improving management skills. In this regard, I think they have been left short. We advocated allocating additional funding through Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs to support SMEs. The composite measures we sought were to increase by 50% the funding for Green For Micro, Lean for Micro; for all management development programmes; for the Digital Start initiative; for technical assistance for micro exporters; and for the mentors' work programme. We also looked for €1 million to be allocated to conduct research into the roll-out of a business blue certificate education course between Skillnet and ISME, and for a doubling of the funding for the innovation voucher scheme to bring the voucher value to €10,000 per voucher.

On funding for Enterprise Ireland and exporting SMEs, the budget also come up short.

We had focused on prioritising an increase in the numbers of SMEs that are exporting by increasing by 50% the funding for the Enterprise Ireland market discovery fund and entry to the eurozone programme, as well as by providing €1 million in additional funding for the Enterprise Ireland post-Brexit market growth and diversification grant. The reason for this is that the Irish economy is an open one with a significant trade surplus relative to its size, but that is not necessarily replicated at the level of SMEs. Ireland's direct SME export levels are very low by international standards. Most SMEs are not exporting and a significant percentage of existing SME exporters only trade with the British market. Furthermore, increasing the number of SMEs that export is the best way to dilute the State's over-reliance and economic concentration on a small number of multinational corporations. We need to diversify our enterprise and industrial base and, unfortunately, there is very little in this budget that will assist in that regard. We cannot remain over-reliant on a small group of multinational corporations for corporation tax receipts. We have to be encouraging Irish businesses to expand and grow, and, indeed, to hire people.

I will address the big issue that is facing business. The Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment recently held a hearing in respect of the potential for growth. We spoke to representatives of Chambers Ireland, ISME and the Irish Exporters Association. They told us that housing is the greatest challenge that business is facing at the moment. Mr. Ian Talbot from Chambers Ireland said:

The greatest challenge facing small and medium enterprises this year is the lack of available talent, which is driven by affordable and appropriate housing being unavailable across most of the country. With a small number of exceptions, our chambers have housing as the main cause of their businesses’ challenges, which highlights how important it is for us to achieve the goal of sustainable cities [etc.]

Mr. Simon McKeever from the Irish Exporters Association, reflecting the views of his members, said:

Housing has become a significant issue for our members' ability to attract and retain talent. We have consistent engagement with businesses across the country and housing has been a pressing issue for some time, but it is now becoming a greater concern.

Those are the issues that are facing people who are struggling to create jobs in this State. They needed a housing budget but instead got absolutely no comfort from the Government to suggest it is going to be able to solve the housing crisis that it created.

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