Seanad debates

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Innovation at the Heart of the Jobs Challenge: Statements

 

6:00 pm

Photo of Richard BrutonRichard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

Part of the issue is funding. Perhaps we should consider a halfway house to give people who start up at least the security of a certain number of years of cover to help them on the difficult journey they are on. Personal guarantee demands can be appealed to the Credit Review Office. There is a pattern, but they can be appealed if they are thought to be unfair.

I do not want to speak out of turn on the Hunt report and Waterford, because the area needs to be developed by the Minister who is responsible, but WIT is doing worthwhile things and there is scope to develop some of them. Like Senator O'Brien, I would like to see that happen. Let us develop what is working. I am not saying that the issue is not important. It is obviously important, and every Senator who spoke mentioned it. Deepening innovation is clearly important, but we need to consider practical steps. We can get into institutional engineering as the be-all and end-all, but organisations can become obsessed with the restructuring process and do nothing while it is going on. It is about policy and getting the system to work in delivering it. If it is more sensible at local level to have Leader programmes, development boards, business development units and county planning teams to work together, it is a task for the local authorities to get right. I want to get right the high quality support to microenterprise while collaborating in a sensible way with local government to assist with that role.

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