Rose Conway-Walsh urges simpler access to SME grants

Minister, I want to ask you to outline the means by which the Department is simplifying access to existing grant and support schemes for SMEs and the steps you are taking to reduce the administrative burden for those businesses. The administrative burden on small and medium sized enterprises at the moment is a major impediment for business owners around the country, sucking vital resources away from business that could be better deployed elsewhere. I by no means mean that we do not have the scrutiny that we absolutely need for the previous question that was asked. I am happy to inform the Deputy that my Department is making significant progress in simplifying the application process for enterprise grants, particularly those administered through local enterprise offices and Enterprise Ireland. Following the introduction and an instruction from my Department through the recently established Small Business Unit, Enterprise Ireland Leo Centre of Excellence has completed a comprehensive review of the application requirements for each of the Leo grants. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of questions across multiple grant schemes. For example, the primary and business expansion grants have been reduced by 47 per cent, the Green for Business grant by 30 per cent and the Feasibility grant by 28 per cent. Work has already commenced with their online application service provider to make the recommended changes as well as merging the application process for the Digital for Business grant and Green for Business constituencies with respective follow-up grants, Grow Digital and the Energy Efficiency grant. Enterprise Ireland is also driving this process through their major initiatives. The Service Delivery Transformation Programme will introduce a new operating model along with an advanced technology and data capabilities to deliver service of excellence. The Startup Ireland Programme is focused on creating a better journey for start-ups and entrepreneurs, strengthening the ecosystem coordination and enhancing both national and international connectivity. Together these programmes will deliver greater impact and support for Irish enterprise. Work is also underway with the National Enterprise Hub to examine how it can be utilised to reduce the administrative burden for SMEs applying for government supports. Scoping work is taking place to identify common data points in applications, starting with agencies under the control of my department and to consider how the National Enterprise Hub can be further developed in line with once-only principles of data provision. The issue is that we still have too many people that are coming again to our constituency offices that cannot get the help and the support that they need to be able to access grants. I hope that any grants that are announced in the budget will be thought out properly. I think the way to do that, in terms of the design of the grants, is to have businesses and have small businesses involved involved at the design stage of these grants, because they will be able to see what impediments may arise to prevent them from accessing the grants. What you often find is that the businesses who least need the grant cannot get it, and the business who really, really needs the grant cannot access it, either because of the criteria being too tight or the administrative burden being too large. The significant time and effort could be redirected to other business and substantial costs could be saved if compliance and regulations and public authority reporting could be eased. Again, I mean no way in terms of deregulating, because we only have to look at the defective country block to see the results of deregulation in this country. Minister. Minister. Minister. Thank you. We are really not talking about regulation here. We are talking about the administrative procedures for small businesses to get the funding they need to develop their online platform, to ensure they are becoming more sustainable, to enable them to meet their objectives. And what we want to do is make that process easier, because this is a significant risk to the taxpayer. Many of these grants are particularly small, and there are so many genuine enterprises that just do not have time, because time is their most scarce resource. So what I would say is that we are working through the process with Enterprise Ireland. We have made significant progress on our LEOs, which the users should be seeing the benefits of that now. And secondly, in relation to the design and policy, our SME test now has been brought forward to our state agencies. So we are really looking at thinking small first. How does the change, be it statutory instruments or the designing of schemes, impact on the smallest businesses that do not have the resource base to go through very significant administrative processes? So we will do a huge amount of work on that. But that is from the policy, that is how you change what way the scope is determined over government. Thank you, Minister. And finally, Deputy Commissioner Walsh. Thank you, Minister. Minister, would you think about this? In Sinn Féin's manifesto, and indeed for a number of years, we have envisaged the establishment of Mál Ghanó, a new Irish enterprise agency that is focused specifically on scaling existing Irish businesses, on being a strong agency for non-export-focused start-up and established companies. That is specifically to cover the void of support from existing agencies like Enterprise Ireland and IDA. And Enterprise Ireland and IDA do a really good job. But if we are not going to use the space that we have at the moment to address the over-reliance of foreign direct investment, which we absolutely need as well and thrive on. But we have to bridge that gap. And I think in setting up a new agency as such, and I hate the idea even of a new agency, but something very specific, to have very specific targets and aims for that area to increase our Indigenous businesses rapidly in the space that we've been given. Thank you and I appreciate the feedback and the ideas because we all do really need ideas coming forward. So at the moment I am focused on, particularly with Enterprise Ireland and Leo's, is making things more accessible, trying to reduce the admin burden. And secondly, which is very important in particular to your comments, is that, you know, trying to establish a new accelerator programme for our country. You will be very much aware of, you know, Porter Shed in Galway, you know, Dogpatch here in Dublin, the NDRC and the issues around it. You know, we really need to ensure that we have a stable landscape for those businesses that really are very much part of the Indigenous economy to thrive. So we will be bringing forward through, hopefully, our capital allocations that we have received, a new national accelerator programme that we really look and work with, bringing all those strands together and ensuring that prime space is kept for businesses that need it, that gives them the opportunity to grow and scale. Because we know at this point in time we are very challenged by the US, the EU is well left behind in relation to the growth and scaling of companies, particularly in the tech side, you know, we are really, really far behind at this point in time. We have a huge amount of work to do in that area. So I'm also open to ideas for colleagues and look forward to working with you. Thank you, Minister. Thanks very much.