Maeve O'Connell (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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413. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will report on his Department’s work to encourage digitisation both within his own Department, and in businesses. [17178/25]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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My Department is actively promoting digitisation and digitalisation through several initiatives aimed at enhancing the digital capabilities of businesses, particularly SMEs.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has responsibility for the enterprise actions under the overarching National Digital Strategy, Harnessing Digital. The strategy set targets of 90% of SMEs having at least basic digital intensity, and at least 75% take-up of AI, Cloud, and Data Analytics by 2030.

We now have several targeted supports in place to drive increased adoption of technology among businesses. Some of those supports include:

• The newly expanded Grow Digital Voucher from the Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) which has been available since September 2024. The voucher offers small businesses with up to 50 employees up to €5,000 to embrace digital technology including AI.
• Enterprise Ireland has teamed up with the National Cyber Security Centre on the new Cyber Security Review Grant of €3,000 which will assist SMEs to take steps to review and update their online security measures to mitigate against the risk of cyber-attacks.
• The Local Enterprise Offices' (LEOs) Digital for Business consultancy scheme provides expert digital consultants to help businesses explore technology adoption opportunities.
• The Grow Digital Portal helps companies to embrace basic digital tools for driving efficiencies and productivity and for marketing and selling online where appropriate for their business.
• The new network of European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) is now available to help SMEs to understand the benefits of digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, data analytics and business productivity tools. All four EDIHs have seen steady and significant growth in the number of organisations accessing services since their launch, delivering over 630 services to more than 300 SMEs and several public sector organisations.
• With regard to our FDI base, IDA Ireland’s Business Development Programme, funded via the Digital Transition Fund under Ireland’s Recovery & Resilience Plan, assists in funding the cost of consultants to work with a company’s Irish leadership team in addressing how to create a Strategic Digital Transformation Programme. The IDA also works to facilitate engagement with Digital Manufacturing Ireland to enable Irish-based manufacturers access, adopt and accelerate new digital technologies.

With regard to digitisation within my Department, much of the day to day work now uses digital platforms- the Department leverages the Build to Share platforms developed by OGCIO (the ePQ, eFOI, eRisk, eCorrespondence support the internal processes of the Department and its Offices and eDocs is the primary platform used for managing internal documents).

There are individual business systems supporting the customer facing processes of the Companies Registration Office (CRO), the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland (IPOI), the Labour Court and the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and over the recent period these have been progressively modernised with the launch of a new CRO website, the refresh of the portal used by members of the public to lodge complaints with the WRC and the launch of a new Case Management system to administer hearings of the Labour Court. Within IPOI recent projects have been successfully delivered to digitise the registration of international trademarks and to update the generation of the IPOI journal.

In addition, the WRC have implemented efficiencies in their internal processes through the use of Robotic Process Automation and the CRO has recently launched an Open Data portal which allows external parties to undertake analysis of CRO filing data. The CRO also uses machine learning to scan digitised annual returns to check whether they are signed in the appropriate places. This technology has proven to be very effective in delivering processing efficiencies for the CRO. Work is also underway within the IPOI to streamline the online process for the opposition of trademarks and to expand electronic payments for intellectual property rights as well as to utilise Blockchain and AI capabilities.

Similarly within the Department, new customer facing systems have been implemented to manage the processing of Export Authorisation applications for dual use (civil/military) and Inward Investment Screening applications and work is underway to launch a new portal and back end system to manage applications and processing Employment Permits which will be launched in the immediate period ahead.