Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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152. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the estimated cost of establishing a new Irish enterprise agency to assist small and medium enterprises trading domestically. [28837/22]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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As defined in the Programme for Government, this Government values the role of SMEs and micro-enterprises in our economy as creators of employment all over Ireland. The SME and Entrepreneurship Growth Plan provides a set of recommendations directly from the business community to the Government of long term strategic importance for SMEs and entrepreneurs.

Balancing our enterprise policy between FDI, export only businesses and indigenous firms, is an important policy consideration and one which was touched upon by the OECD in its 2019 report on entrepreneurship and SME policy in Ireland.

The OECD report refers to 250,000 active enterprises in Ireland of which 92% are microenterprises. Such a high number presents challenges in terms of the State’s engagement and compliance with the EU's state aid rules when engaging with enterprises.

In terms of provision of business and advisory assistance to indigenous local businesses there is already extensive help available, ranging from information/awareness, advisory, financial schemes, grants for regional enterprise development, delivered through a network of bodies with a wide reach into urban and rural localities, including Enterprise Ireland (EI), the 31 Local Enterprise offices (LEOs), InterTrade Ireland (ITI), and MicroFinance Ireland (MFI).

My Department administers schemes, such as the Online Retail Scheme, assisting small and medium enterprises trading domestically who were adversely affected by the Covid 19 pandemic to continue trading during the pandemic, work that would not normally come under the Enterprise Ireland remit.

Enterprise Ireland is also in a position to assist domestically focussed companies who wish to undertake Research and Development. There have been many non-EI client companies who availed of offers such as the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund and Innovation Vouchers in recent years and there is no barrier to a domestically trading company seeking such R&D support.

Indeed, Sector specific help is available from a range of other State agencies, such as Skillnet Ireland which works with all sectors, Bord Bia, Teagasc and Bord Iascaigh Mhara in the food, drink and seafood sector, Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland in the hospitality and tourism sectors, and the Arts Council, Design & Crafts Council, and Screen Ireland in the creative sector.

Currently My Department officials are working on an Enterprise White paper which is examining all aspects of Enterprise Policy, including enterprises trading domestically.