Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

I thank everybody for their patience and for waiting to hear the response. We are all of the same view that everything has to be done. The Minister, Deputy Burke, has been incredibly proactive in putting together teams of people around the table with the officials – I am ably assisted here today by some of the officials – to hear what the burdens are and how we can simplify them. My role around digitalisation and AI involves working with our local enterprise offices, LEOs, Enterprise Ireland and CeADAR. This last organisation is another Government agency to help businesses interested in developing AI, that is, not just businesses seeking to use the technology but actual AI businesses too.

Perhaps the greatest job we have to do and the biggest hurdle we have to jump is demonstrating to businesses that are not digital or technical businesses how digitalisation can apply to them and help them. I will give the House an example. Kerry County Council, working with Failte Ireland, the LEO and CeADAR – I can come back at any time to give further information on this organisation – held a round-table training day with individual hotels in the hospitality sector. These were not part of chains but independent, small, family-run hotels. They spent time talking to those hotels and teasing out the mundane parts of their job that could be taken away and done by an AI tool or digitalisation to allow them the time and the space to be more creative and help their businesses to grow and scale. This is what we are about and this is my particular area of responsibility in the Department.

One of the amendments is concerned with the funding of enterprise parks and centres. Only yesterday, officials from Cavan County Council and Monaghan County Council were working together on the basis of a shared island report to do exactly this. They were trying to identify lands and spaces to see how they can be developed with services put in place to ensure the small and medium-sized businesses referred to, which may have come from garden sheds, small garages and very small beginnings, can be helped by the local authorities to do exactly what this proposed amendment aims to do, namely, grow and scale. The smart enterprise fund is there to do exactly that. I do not disagree, therefore, with anything that anybody is saying today. I want the Senators to know and be fully aware that I will certainly do anything I can to help on my watch in this Department because I know how it feels. If you have lived this experience, you know exactly how the people around the table are feeling and what they are talking about.

I must return to some of the formalities, though, if the Senators can bear with me while I do it. I am pleased to be here today to respond on this very important motion. I thank the Senators for raising it and for collating the details in it because this is exactly what we are about in the Government. I acknowledge the constructive and forward-looking nature of the motion. It reflects a shared understanding across this House of the need to foster a more competitive, resilient and innovation-friendly business environment, especially in the face of heightened international uncertainty. I take this opportunity to also acknowledge the important work done by the Tánaiste, Simon Harris, who, on foot of what has happened geopolitically, has established the trade forum and invited me to sit on it. He has ensured all Departments, including all the Secretaries General and officials who have a role to play in this area, are around the table. Indeed, they have been around the table since these announcements were made.

This motion recognises the centrality of SMEs in our economy, the importance of reducing costs and bureaucracy and the need for a consistent and proportionate regulatory environment, which Senator Keogan spoke about. This is what we really want. It is about ensuring small and medium-sized businesses are not put sitting alongside our corporate and more global companies and expecting the same regulation for them. These are the better regulation principles that the Government fully endorses and is actively working to embed across the system.

On this occasion, I cannot accept the amendments from the Senators, but I assure them it is for the very good reason, as I have outlined, that we are already doing all this. The SME test is a policy tool designed to invite officials tasked with policymaking to consider less stringent compliance requirements for smaller companies, where appropriate and proportionate. I know I am reflecting the views raised here today. The SME test is already being systematically applied to relevant legislation. In 2024 alone, 26 SME tests were conducted in eight Departments, and ten of these were undertaken by the Department of enterprise, tourism and employment. Additionally, offices and agencies of the Department are now being instructed by the Minister, Deputy Burke, to apply the SME test when developing new initiatives and offerings. I assure the Senators this stress test is there, is being done and will continue to be done very stringently.

Fundamentally, the SME test drives home and embeds the "think small first" principle. Let us just think of the wording used here in respect of "think small first". It is so appropriate for what we are trying to do. At the earliest opportunity across the policymaking system, the impacts that new policy, legislation or regulation may have on SMEs can be considered and steps taken to mitigate these impacts where appropriate. I think this responds to what all the Senators across the House said today.

Regional development is already a key element of the Government's enterprise policy. As a Border TD from Cavan-Monaghan who is very familiar with the particular characteristics of the Border region, I am acutely aware of how important regional development is. The availability of property and infrastructure solutions can be a key factor in investment decisions and a robust property and infrastructure ecosystem can be a key differentiator in winning FDI projects. The IDA regional property programme ensures the supply of land, buildings and infrastructure in regional locations as required by current and prospective clients of the IDA and Enterprise Ireland and the LEOs. I assure the Senators that I get regular updates from all our State agencies to ensure we are moving at pace to ensure we are supporting businesses.