Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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116. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the degree to which she remains satisfied that adequate incentives, supports, modern technology and innovative services remain available to the indigenous business sector here having regard to increased competition in the market place; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23081/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department, through its enterprise agencies is committed to supporting business to understand and respond to technological change and to incentivising indigenous businesses and entrepreneurs to start, innovate and remain competitive in international markets, now and into the future.

Enterprise Ireland’s focus for 2018 is to help clients build on the strength of their 2017 performance by supporting them to innovate, be competitive and to diversify their global footprint - key attributes required to be resilient to economic shocks, such as those emerging from any kind of Brexit.

To build resilience, Enterprise Ireland has put an increased emphasis on market diversification, driving innovation and competitiveness. In delivering on this, new supports have been introduced, others streamlined, and a Global Ambition campaign launched, for example:

Market Diversification: Enterprise Ireland is actively working with companies with global ambition to internationalise, and in doing so, diversify their global footprint. This is critical for long term business growth. To support this, Enterprise Ireland recently launched a new Market Discovery Fund to incentivise companies to research viable and sustainable market entry strategies in new geographic markets. The agency is also increasing its trade mission programme in 2018.

Innovation is essential for companies to be competitive internationally and to win market share. Enterprise Ireland is working with its clients to drive innovation activity via a number of supports that enable companies to:

- Diagnose their innovation readiness;

- Finance in-house R&D projects; and

- Finance collaboration with research expertise within the Higher Education Sector and with companies.

In addition, Enterprise Ireland recently launched a new fast-track Agile Innovation Fund which gives companies rapid access to innovation funding to enhance processes and adapt products for new markets.

Competitiveness is critical for companies to scale and internationalise. Enterprise Ireland is working with companies to identify their competitiveness challenges and to support companies by providing access to a range of competitiveness building tools, including the Company Competitiveness Health Check, the Lean Offer and Green Offer.  Later in 2018, Enterprise will be announcing a new enhanced offering in this space.