Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. It is something that gets raised with me all of the time. The Government recognises that domestically traded sectors account for a significant number of firms in Ireland and, more importantly, for a high proportion of employment across the retail, construction, hospitality, leisure, and many other sectors. They contribute to the economies and social fabric of towns and villages across Ireland and help create jobs in every single region. Government policy has ensured a competitive business environment for all firms based on a world-class economic infrastructure, a competitive tax regime, supports for start-ups, scaling, and investment, and strong institutions that provide access to skills and research and development.

To further improve our assistance for businesses, as part of budget 2024, the Government announced a new national enterprise hub. This will have a dedicated website and phone line with a hub adviser to help businesses to access State supports. Any business, including those referenced in the Deputy's question, can call it for direct help in navigating the comprehensive suite of supports that are on offer to business throughout Ireland.

Since their establishment in 2014, the local enterprise offices, LEOs, have acted as a first-stop shop for providing advice and guidance, financial assistance and other supports to those wishing to start or grow their own businesses. The LEOs have dramatically expanded their reach over the past number of years and the White Paper on Enterprise sets out a pathway for the LEOs to enhance their advisory services for these domestically traded sectors through the training, development and mentoring supports that are available to all enterprises. Furthermore, the local enterprise offices can help small businesses to improve productivity and reduce energy use and carbon emissions through the digital start and energy efficiency grant schemes. However, there are significant challenges to providing direct grant supports to domestically trading firms. These include the need to avoid excessive displacement or funding activity that would have taken place anyway and ensuring that we do not raise barriers to entry for entrepreneurs and new firms by supporting incumbents, thereby reducing competition and innovation for consumers. In the budget that was agreed just this week, we have set aside almost €10 million extra for the local enterprise office network so that these offices can support as broad a range of businesses as possible.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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We hope we will be able to support many of those kinds of companies in moving to new digital platforms and new online sales processes. These are the kinds of things for which we can potentially give grant aid. In the latest round of the online retail scheme, 98 retailers received €2.3 million in funding, with 79% of successful applicant companies based outside of Dublin. There are schemes available but we have to be careful about looking for local enterprise offices to give grant aid to businesses that are competing with other businesses locally. If you give grant aid to one local manufacturing facility to upgrade, you have to give it to everybody. Otherwise, you generate unfair competition through the use of State supports. We are trying to do strategic things such as helping companies to reduce their energy bills through decarbonisation or to become more efficient through the use of new digital platforms. We have to be careful not to give unfair competitive advantage to one local business over another local business by giving grant aid to one and not the other. There are some restrictions but I assure the Deputy that there are plenty of ways in which local enterprise offices can support local businesses of all types.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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First, Enterprise Ireland's remit has expanded from the end of last year. Until the end of last year, LEOs were only able to support and work with businesses that employed less than ten people. That figure has been increased to less than 50 people for companies that are manufacturing and exporting. If this is an exporting company, we can provide supports because it does not create potential displacement in local economies. There are companies that are not, for example, interested in moving to online trading platforms and so on, which there is grant aid support for. I accept there are some businesses that do not want to do that. They are focusing on local clients. There are areas where they can get help too; for example, energy-efficiency grants.

We now have a single portal - supportingsmes.gov.ie- where a person involved with an SME can access different areas of support such as mentoring, advice, grant aid, decarbonisation, digitalisation or other levels of supports. There is a lot more clarity there now for companies. We are going to improve that even further in terms of improved single communication so that businesses can get the information they need. There are a lot of small businesses out there that do not even know that there are supports available for them because they do not think they are in the right category or whatever. One will find that most businesses can get some support through their LEO.