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

I welcome to the Gallery the young person who is cheering us on up there. Their father is desperately walking around trying to keep them quiet.

I thank the Deputy for the question. My Department regularly explores ways to assist businesses and create an environment that stimulates their growth. However, it is important that Government intervention be focused on those areas where there is genuinely a market failure. My Department, working with Enterprise Ireland offers a range of supports for exporting businesses, such as training, in-market support and trade missions. My Department has also developed several schemes, working through the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland. These provide financing support for businesses, including exporting businesses, and they include the Ukraine guarantee scheme, on the basis of which the Government takes some of the risk, and the growth and sustainability loan scheme, which we launched recently.

Export credit insurance is available from the private market. In early 2020, in the context of the major disruptions to global trade and supply chains in the early stages of the spread of Covid, my Department completed an assessment of the need for State-supported export credit insurance. The assessment found that Irish insurers, as subsidiaries or branches of international insurer groups, are financially strong and did not need to be financially supported by the Government intervention during the pandemic.

My Department has continued to monitor the export credit insurance market. In 2021, with the assistance of an external export credit insurance expert, it conducted an internal review to assess the potential need for a State-backed export credit insurance scheme. This review involved engagement with trade credit insurers, industry and other relevant stakeholders, such as Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. Following these consultations and on reviewing Ireland's strong trade export statistics over the past ten years, it was again found that there was no clear demand or need for State intervention in terms of export credit insurance.

Exports and international trade will remain central to Ireland’s growth model and economic strategy in the years to come.

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