Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is an honour to speak in this room. It was quite humbling to walk in the door. It is an honour to have the Minister of State present. I congratulate him on his new position and look forward to working with him.

Coming from a small village in north Clare, all we have ever had are microenterprises. There are just about no multinationals anywhere along the western seaboard from Kerry up to Donegal. Microenterprises are the original circular economy. Someone goes to a local butcher or corner shop, picks up a newspaper and drops money in, and that money goes into the business owner's pocket and his or her kids get to go to school, to dancing classes and so on. As a nation, we must move towards a circular economy if we are to maintain our sustainability. It keeps jobs, people and money local and is the bedrock of resilient communities. Any community that has a lot of small businesses is much more resilient than communities in places like, for example, Limerick and Shannon where large multinationals that had been providing hundreds of jobs decided to go away overnight and left very little in their wake save for the devastation caused to thousands of lives, not just of employees, but of their families and the small businesses they supported through their incomes. A circular economy helps to protect communities from an over-reliance on multinationals. This is a major factor. The more reliant we are on small enterprises, the more long term, safe and secure our jobs can be.

Those who own microenterprises are hard-working people. I have worked in the SME sector and the Civil Service sector. In some ways, there is no comparison. As a civil servant, one clocks in at 9 a.m. and out at 5 p.m., has a pension and so on. I come from a family of small business owners. They and many of my friends work seven days per week from 7 a.m. until midnight trying to keep their jobs and the jobs of their small number of staff going. That is significant, so when we debate Bills like this one and design packages, we must listen to such people more than we do to the civil servants by whom we as politicians are now surrounded. We must listen to the people we are trying to support. Otherwise, any stimulus package we provide will be too complicated and will fail.

This is an excellent Bill on paper. If it passes, though, I will suggest something to ensure it manifests as easily as possible. We have excellent local enterprise offices, LEOs, but we are in a jobs emergency. Can we get LEOs to employ someone just to deal with the bureaucracy involved? It is the greatest pain in every small business's life. Businesses never say, "Oh great, there is a grant." They say, "Oh no, more paperwork." LEOs are the best fit. Perhaps we need to place in every LEO an extra staff member whose only purpose is to help with an onerous task that every SME is already familiar with, that being, the paperwork needed to get a grant.

Like other Senators, I wish to discuss the microfinance loans and the crazy interest rate. Back in the day, the State bailed out the banks. Perhaps it is now time for the banks to bail out microenterprises and other small businesses. It cannot always be about the banks making profits. They make their money from lending to small businesses. It is now time for them to step up to the plate and offer 0% or low-rate loans. Surely the Government, which bailed out the banks, has some power to insist on that. We cannot continue with a high rate of 5% or 6%. It is not feasible. The last thing small businesses need is to owe more money. The Government and we as politicians must use our powers to put pressure on banks to offer loans at 0% or, at most, 1% or 2% interest. The current situation is unfair. We are in an emergency, so this calls for emergency measures and the use of our power over the banks.

Bureaucracy is a major issue. Businesses are under stress as matters stand. I am glad that Senator Dooley raised the matter of water. We have small businesses that were not open for three months, but when they finally opened their doors, they had no water. There are so many issues facing small businesses that the last thing we want to do when providing financial assistance is place them under more stress because of paperwork.I would happily work with the Minister on this. The idea of putting an emergency turnaround to support the LEO is important. I was involved in a stimulus for small businesses called “Lean on Me” with Joe Brooks, whose idea it was, and a few others in Limerick. They turned it around in one week. It is an online platform that has led to hundreds of thousands of euro going into small businesses and it gave them a free platform. If we as volunteers can do that in a week, surely a Government with agencies and all supports can not only pass this Bill but ensure that it is an easily accessible financial stimulus that is needed more than ever at this time.

If we are supporting big tourism businesses, we should make sure that crafts or foods they sell are sourced locally. I was in a tourism business recently that was selling cookies or biscuits made in New Zealand and milk made in England. My God, if we cannot supply our own biscuits and milk in this country, we have serious problems. The farmers are not getting paid enough for their milk. Let us get the businesses we support to use local businesses to create positive ripple effects.