Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Like my colleague, Senator Ardagh, I believe the transport situation has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. There has to be ministerial involvement at this stage. At the very least, the Minister could talk to the company and tell them to get back into the WRC and to remain there until such a time as they find a solution. To sit on the bench and refuse to play part in this is not the way the world works. Many Ministers down through the history of this State have used their office to force organisations to come together with their unions and solve problems and that is something that will have to be done. Otherwise, there will be contagion of this problem and we will grind this country to a halt while we are trying to rebuild it. That is not the way forward.

However, I rise this morning to talk about something good. Microfinance Ireland has provided finance for small companies throughout the country to get this country back to work. Setting up Microfinance Ireland and empowering it to lend money to small start-ups was one of the fine things done by the last Government. Alongside it, there are organisations such as the PorterShed in Galway which is an innovation and incubation centre. I visited it recently with the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and it is the most exciting place in which I have been in a long time. It is a hive of activity, where there is a complete exchange of views and ideas. It is an incredible place to be.

I raise this issue because when they were first established, the education and training boards, ETBs, were to have capital funding to provide seed capital for small start-ups. That was taken off them in the 2013 Act, which was a regressive step. The institutes of technology and the universities are phenomenal at providing research and development and providing incubation centres. There is an ETB in every county in Ireland and there is no reason why the ETBs could not be playing their part in the establishment of start-ups.

Coming from a teaching background, the Leader will know himself that there is many the young person who came out of a PLC course, as they were known, or a further education or training course, and found within himself or herself the ability to start up a small business. Small businesses can grow to very large businesses. The 1817 project in Chicago is an example of a small company starting off with one or two people and finished up as big as the Googles, Facebooks and Twitters of this world. We need to put that kind of money into rural Ireland because it is unlikely that one will get any of the large companies there. Ten small companies employing five people each is 50 jobs no matter how one looks at it. Five jobs in a small town lifts the entire town because of the knock-on effect. Perhaps we might get the Minister for Education and Skills in here and see can we re-establish some form of capital for ETBs to provide seed funding for small start-ups.