Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and wish him every success in this endeavour which is most important because we have had to reorientate the Irish economy away from the banks because they no longer served us. We have had to curtail the growth of public sector employment and we still have a problem identified by the troika today that too many of the sheltered sector services, in particular legal services, are far too expensive. It is a difficult place for a start-up.

I welcome the Department’s announcement of the 24 finalists in Ireland’s best young entrepreneur competition which had over 1,000 entries. That is the re-orientation which is needed. We did a lot of things wrong and made many mistakes and that is what we are trying to correct. We tabled an amendment when the Minister for Finance was here to try to keep the funds in the SBCI for entrepreneurial activities and out of property. He changed the articles of association so that this will be used for counter-cyclical purposes while property must be the definition of pro-cyclical purposes, particularly the way we ran it here.

Why is it not possible now to buy a house for 2.5 times average income as was possible many decades ago? Our parents were able to do that. What is wrong with the construction industry that it is unable to meet a target like that? Has its productivity gone wrong? These are some of the criticisms of it by Ronan Lyons, a property economist in Trinity College Dublin. The extremely high price of property is a major obstacle to doing business in this country. I regularly dissent when people wrongly hail higher house prices as an indication of prosperity. They add to the cost base of the economy.

That is something we must avoid. Regarding the LEOs, and I do not know if that is a reflection on any candidate for the next leadership of the current leading Government party, what does a LEO do that the county enterprise boards did not do? Are we progressing or are we just putting new labels on old bottles?

I am glad the Minister of State is addressing the issue of finance for growth. Irish banks did nothing except invest in property, and the numbers show it. Would they know a small and medium enterprise if it presented itself right in front of them? They have not been doing it. Can the Minister of State change the corporate culture of Irish banking?

I note that the Minister of State said that our lending partners are AIB and Bank of Ireland. We could not have Anglo Irish Bank as a lending partner. I hope that the corporate culture of those bodies has changed. We want some thing different. I am concerned that many of the previous developers are in league with NAMA. Perhaps we need the assistance of AIB and Bank of Ireland for a while, but they did not do the job. That is what we are trying to correct now. The Minister of State has our support for his endeavour in this regard.

We need legal reform and energy costs reform. The economist, Cormac Lucey, wrote about that in the newspapers last Sunday. The regulator has not paid sufficient attention to the needs of small and medium enterprises. They are buying energy at 20% to 30% in excess of what businesses in other countries are paying. Regulators in Ireland tend to be captured.

I welcome the initiative of the Musgrave Group owners of SuperValu who have launched the Food Academy whereby new entrepreneurs start to supply their local store and grow until their products are on the market. We sometimes talk about small and medium enterprise and do not do anything about it.

There is a proposal to have 10% of bus routes open to competition but this is being held up all the time. People have made a substantial difference in the Minister of State's constituency and other businesses can enter the bus service and increase the market share of public transport. Something similar happened in taxis.

A small and medium enterprise that wished to tender for the postcode competition was ruled out of the competition because its turnover was not over €40 million a year. That seems a very strange way to promote small and medium enterprises. I doubt the wisdom of the postal code system in general.

This strategy should be entrepreneurial and not agency driven. The low corporate tax rate should be as productive as possible and not one in which fiscal termites chisel out, that is, too many tax lawyers and accountants. Let us have real entrepreneurship. I am sure the Minister of State supports that and we support him.