Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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398. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the policies he is implementing to support small businesses, especially in the hospitality sector; the assistance he is providing to reduce costs; the action he is taking to reduce unnecessary red tape and burdensome regulation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52115/25]

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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My Government colleagues and I recognise the challenges faced by the hospitality sector in recent years, due to rising costs and other factors. In the Programme for Government, we have committed to bringing forward measures to support SMEs, in particular the retail and hospitality sectors, acknowledging the increased cost pressures on these sectors.

The Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) based within the 31 Local Authorities are the first stop shop for local businesses in Ireland including those operating in the Hospitality sector, offering a signposting service for all government supports and providing information and referrals to other relevant bodies.

To assist small businesses to reduce their costs and become more productive and competitive, the LEOs provide consultancy and grants to small businesses across all sectors, in the areas of Lean, Green, and Digital. These supports focus on enhancing productivity and improving competitiveness in small businesses.

The LEO Centre of Excellence has initiated work to make changes to the application forms, as well as merging the application processes for the Digital for Business and Green for Business consultancies with the respective follow-on grants – Grow Digital and the Energy Efficiency Grant. These changes will be implemented by the start of October and will significantly reduce the administrative burden on small businesses looking to implement Digital change or Decarbonisation projects.

To further ease access to business supports, the National Enterprise Hub (NEH) provides an all-of-government free service, staffed by expertly trained advisors and is focused on helping business owners access a range of government supports. Work is ongoing with Department officials in the Small Business unit and Enterprise Ireland to continue to improve this service and simplify access to business supports, including examining how it can be utilised to reduce the admin burden for SMEs applying for Government supports. Scoping work is taking place to identify common data points in applications, starting with agencies under the DETE umbrella, and to consider how the NEH can be further developed in line with the 'once-only' principle of data provision.

The recently published Action Plan on Competitiveness and Productivity – a commitment in the Programme for Government – is a whole-of-government strategic response to the challenges that Ireland is facing. A key focus of the Action Plan is improving Ireland’s regulatory environment under the theme “Regulating for Growth and Controlling Costs.”

Measures under this theme include introducing a ‘Red Tape Challenge’ across Government to reduce regulation for SMEs, a public consultation to identify areas of high burden, and all Government Departments will apply the SME test to all measures in particular to policy initiatives where it is proposed to increase costs on small business.

In terms of my own Department, there is an ongoing commitment to ensuring that the regulatory environment is proportionate and fit for purpose. This includes the conduct of Regulatory Impact Analysis and the systematic application of the SME Test which has been designed to invite consideration of less stringent compliance requirements for smaller companies, where appropriate and proportionate.