Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator Mary White raised the issue of 8,500 vacancies even though we have high emigration and high unemployment. The action of the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, to double the output in the ICT area is an important response. Senator Clune referred to conversion courses. Equally, students and parents must take note. At the start of this decade 9.5% of students did ICT courses. By 2007 the percentage had dropped to approximately half the amount. People voted with their feet to move their study away from the skills that drove an open economy into the skills that drove the property sector. Unfortunately, it is not just the banks that collapsed; but our choice of career went astray. That is an important issue.

Senator Clune made an important point, which is worth reiterating, that approximately 50% of businesses are online but less than half of those trade online. That is shooting themselves in the foot. The statistics show that companies that go online double their rate of turnover growth. It is important to get people to switch. The CEBs have been doing work in this area, as have companies such as Google. More could be done. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, is very interested in the issue.

I thank Senator Clune for her work on ICT skills. Real issues arise in that regard. She also spoke about other areas that are not as big as ICT but should be examined. The plastics sector is giving out about lack of skills. It is eminently possible to fill such positions. We must build more connection between our industries and our educational institutes. Dare I say, business must think a bit more long term. We do not have the tradition, as they have in Germany, of traineeships, where people commit to provide places to bring on the next generation of expertise. We need to see more of that approach.

Senator Mary Ann O?Brien raised the issue of sick pay. I acknowledge that could be a problem. Senator Harte referred to the much higher level of sickness in the public sector at approximately 5% compared with 2% in SMEs. We must be careful about anything that would increase the cost of employment. That said, there is a genuine issue in that we seem to have a very high level of long-term dependency under sickness headings on the social welfare system. It is similar to people drifting into long-term unemployment. We have a system where people drift into long-term sickness dependency. We must think of other ways to deal with the issue. Employers must consider how to bring such people back to the workplace rather than accepting that such people drift into receipt of invalidity pension. That is a more important issue to be examined.

Senator Zappone raised procurement policy. There is clearly a conflict between the need to get best value, which largely means centralised contracts and cheap price, and diversity of supply. I accept we must find savings in procurement, which is the lowest hanging fruit. There is no point in us paying 50% more for paper because we scatter it across thousands of contractors. That is madness. We must ensure that innovative companies get the opportunity to bid for business and that, as they do in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, we encourage innovative companies. In the action plan we have a number of good models such as the ESB and several others which do not come to mind. They work with innovative companies to get the first sale and get the company to have a reference sale and the ability to sell beyond that. We can commit to such an approach. We must engineer procurement to favour it but I do not think we will be able to say that there will be a stationery provider in every village in the country. It does not make sense to cut front-line health care in order to support that level of inefficiency or waste.

There are different pressures we have to accommodate. Social enterprise comes under the action plan and will be delivered on before the end of the year. There is scope for social criteria to be included in tenders, which the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, is examining. Taking someone off the live register in the area where the contract is being awarded, for example, is legitimate under EU rules. Some other points suggested that would favour local suppliers would not be legitimate.

Senator Harte raised the important issue of how small businesses prepare their credit requests for their banks. The banks are at fault for the very high refusals for credit. However, Mazars?s and other studies show applications from small businesses are sometimes not just good enough. They are also not using the appeals mechanism internally in the bank or in the Credit Review Office. We need better support for small businesses to present their case well and be willing to pursue it after the first refusal.

The first competitive feasibility fund for female entrepreneurs, coming to ¤250,000, was oversubscribed. We got 100 applications when we expected between 30 and 40. We are offering another fund, coming to ¤500,000, which will close on 4 December. Hopefully, it will be equally successful.

Senator Quinn raised the matter of voluntary pensions. That issue is beyond my pay grade. There was an incentive where voluntary pensions got a special dispensation in not paying tax to provide for long-term pensions. There are issues as to what funds would be let out of this. It is a matter for the Minister for Finance to consider. In the past, I have noted the Revenue Commissioners being uneasy about this. Senator Quinn also raised the point about a low-tax system for entrepreneurship. Senator Healy Eames?s brandishing of our little leaflet is our answer to that. If people want to establish a company, they can get ¤600,000 from their previous PAYE tax to put into their company. There are generous tax reliefs to get people to switch into entrepreneurship. These are the sorts of incentives we need to create and get more take-up of them. The truth is that only 70 people take up these schemes every year when the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, GEM, points out nearly 2,000 businesses are set up every month. There seems to be some breakdown in communication which we are seeking to address by having this information available through the Companies Registration Office, county enterprise boards and local enterprise offices.

Senator Cullinane and others asked if we could make big and bold public investments. The Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform are trying to get public investment off the balance sheet. A bold stroke is setting up funds for innovation, infrastructure and small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, which are off the balance sheet and are renewable which can help to drive investment. For example, these include using the capital from the national lottery to fund the national children?s hospital and water charges for funding investment in the water system. Those are the ways one drives investment when one is fiscally constrained. We have to think smarter than just calling for big spending on public investment.

I support education for entrepreneurship in whatever way we can use it. We will be using the local enterprise offices to promote it. Revenue job assist is a generous subsidy to fill vacancies. Again, maybe we can smarten up the ways these are oriented. This is a double tax relief for three years against wages for the employer plus a tax relief for the employee taken on. It is worth ¤30,000 to a sole trader to take on someone over three years who is long-term unemployed.

The sheltered sector is always with us. Reforming the legal area and local government is very important. However, I do not believe we are at the end of this.

I thank Senators for their input.