Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)

I briefly want to speak in support of this amendment. As the Minister knows, Irish start-ups receive a huge amount of support through Enterprise Ireland and through mentoring. A massive number of the founders of Irish start-ups put up a massive amount of their heart and soul into building up an enterprise, company or business. There are huge success stories from that. Then what happens is they get to a certain scale after maybe 20 years of doing that and it is no longer sustainable for the person who founded it to do it. They want succession and who is knocking on their door but these international private equity firms.

When they are sold to the private equity firms, which is usually what happens, there are different outcomes but sometimes it is an asset stripping or a market charge stripping. The long-term planning and sustainable planning that went into that start-up from the founders is sometimes thrown out the window. We do not necessarily get the value from that mentoring support in subsequent years. It is a real economic loss to do the job so well as a country in terms of supports to the founder and to get us to that point for an awful lot of that to be eroded. Different companies go different ways but that is what can happen.

What this does in terms of where it has happened and the one recent example in Ireland is that it leads to substantial increases in terms of productivity because the people who are working in the place are extra invested. They own it. In terms of problem solving, you hear from different businesses that problems they have not been able to solve for a number of years are solved because there is extra buy-in from the employees who now own the company. You get that extra buy-in and resourcefulness in terms of solving problems and productivity. That is a win-win for everyone. It is good for the economy as well.

I think this makes sense in terms of promoting better workplace democracy and it is better for employees. It helps to retain skills and it is better for the economy as well. We have an issue, as the Minister knows, in terms of productivity in our economy. We have some strong sections of our economy in terms of productivity but some weaker sections as well. Anything that is going to drive up productivity and make a better workplace for the people working in it is to be welcomed and supported.

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