James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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73. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the steps being taken to drive a step change in digital adoption across enterprise; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22080/23]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Embracing digital technologies is crucial for our continued economic progress as well as for meeting the demands of our people in a modern society. As the White Paper on Enterprise outlined, digital transformation is at the heart of our enterprise policy.

The Enterprise Dimension of the National Digital Strategy sets out our goals in relation to the digitalisation of businesses. This includes driving a step change in digital adoption across enterprise, in particular among SMEs.

We have clear targets and initiatives in place to address this divide. We want 90% of SMEs to have achieved basic digital intensity by 2030 and 75% of all enterprises to be using cloud, AI and big data. Those are big ambitions but ones which we are determined to meet.

We know however, that the digital economy in Ireland is running at two different speeds. While a small proportion of the enterprise base has fully embraced digitalisation, there is a need to accelerate and enhance digital adoption right across Irish businesses.

For SMEs, digitalisation can help increase productivity and efficiencies, enable access to new markets – both online and exporting, understand and respond better to their customers, and improve their products through innovation. It is important to emphasise that digital is an essential tool for everyone and every business.

This is the message we have been delivering and will continue to deliver at each of the nine Building Better Business events across the country - where the focus is on digitalisation and decarbonisation.

My Department and the Enterprise Agencies are making concerted efforts to make going digital much more simplified and straightforward. Through the development of a new Digital Portal, any business will be able to get a digital roadmap with clear, tailored advice and guidance of what steps they can take to digitalise. The Digital Portal will demystify digital and will assist businesses on the digital adoption journey when it is launched in the early autumn.

To boost the uptake of digital technology in enterprises, last year the Government established the Digital Transition Fund. This is an €85 million multi-annual fund which will run until 2026. This funding is in place to help companies at all stages of their digital journey. Under Budget 2023, €16 million was allocated to the Digital Transition Fund. There are other sources of funding available including the Trading Online Voucher, the Online Retail Scheme and Digital Start.

This work will be complemented by a network of European Digital Innovation Hubs, which will act as one-stop shops for expertise, advice, and opportunities to test out technologies before investing.