Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)

Absolutely. Retail is the biggest employer in the economy. It is so important to our vision for enterprise.

There are significant supports already in place. One key example I always give is the energy efficiency grant. At the moment, one of the key ways we have to reduce business costs is not to take money off businesses in the first place. Front and centre of that is the energy efficiency grant. I have seen case studies, such as the example of a shop owner in Donegal who has a convenience store with a deli, who, by upgrading his LED lighting and refrigeration, can save €1,500 a month on his utility bills. We want to see business owners involved in schemes like that, in particular in the areas of sustainability and digitalisation. We want to make the conditions easy for them to access it and to get a quicker turnaround in the schemes. We met Enterprise Ireland at its centre of excellence, which liaises with LEOs, this week with that target in mind. We are trying to support businesses as much as we can.

Deputy McCormack quite rightly points out that there are other Departments that are key to the development of our main streets. Vacancy is a big challenge, in particular in regard to accommodation. Getting people to live over the shop, as it were, has been a big challenge because the regulatory burden is very significant in terms of making developments viable in that space. Our new housing plan will be launched in July. I hope we will see actions that involve working with the Minister, Deputy Browne, in that regard to ensure that happens. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, is very focused on that in terms of planning exemptions. There is a lot of work we can do.

We are also working closely with the local authorities. We see very different stimulus plans from various local authorities in terms of how they can bring a bit of agility and how they deploy their rates stimuli, rates budget and waivers, etc. We are up for any way we can support an increased number of retailers in our country. The Deputy will see some of the measures that we have taken on retailers' costs in recent months, which we hope will support them and, equally, help retain employment and jobs, which is our focus every single day in the Department.

See this speech in context