Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 24 June 2014
244. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if he has read the recently published Mazars report regarding small and medium-sized enterprises; the action required arising therefrom; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26677/14]
View answerI wish to confirm to the Deputy that I have read the recent Mazars report titled "How to Be A Stand Out SME" and I participated in the launch of the report last month. The report was prepared to provide analysis, insights, learnings and guidance to SMEs no matter where in the world they operate. The Mazars report goes on to explore what it takes to achieve levels of superior performance, to compete in the market place and effectively stand out from the crowd.
There are 21 million SMEs across the EU, 92% of which are micro enterprises. Some of the key findings of the study relate to building financial resilience and ensuring SMEs look beyond local or regional markets. The Deputy will be aware that this Government is maintaining its focus on assisting our SMEs to establish, scale and export, with a view to driving economic recovery and creating jobs across the country.
SMEs have a critical role to play in both our domestic economy and in international markets and that is why almost all of the actions contained in the Action Plan for Jobs 2014 will impact on the SME sector generally or specific groups of SMEs. Actions around access to finance, the skills agenda, support for research and innovation, support for management development and other capacity building measures are set out in the Action Plan. Sector specific actions covering food and drink, retail, construction, tourism, creative services, eHealth and the Green Economy aim to provide new opportunities for SMEs to win business both here and abroad.
Just some of the measures introduced by this Government to assist SMEs to date, include the establishment of the Local Enterprise Offices; improving access to finance through the Credit Guarantee Scheme and the Microenterprise Loan Fund Scheme, and the establishment later this year of the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland; the development of an online tool which details the different government supports available to SMEs; supporting a pilot SME financial capability programme and supporting SMEs in developing an online presence which is vital in order to maximise their export potential. It is my intention to shortly publish a National Entrepreneurship Policy Statement which will complement the existing business support initiatives in order to ensure that the operating environment is more coherent, responsive and conductive to entrepreneurship.
The hard work undertaken by this Government has already begun to bear some fruit with domestic demand showing signs of growth in the past year and our competitiveness rankings continuing to improve from 24 in 2011 to 15 in 2014, according to IMD's World Competitiveness Yearbook. In addition Forbes magazine recently named Ireland as the best country in the world in which to do business.
Finally I wish to point out that much of the information relied upon by Mazars in their Report was contained in the Small Business Act Profile for Ireland for 2013, which scores each Member State in the European Union on its delivery of the European Small Business Act. In 2013 Ireland was found to be in positive territory in relation to 9 of the 10 measures identified by the Commission in the implementation of the Small Business Act. I am confident that the Commission will once again find that Ireland has a positive Small Business Act Profile for 2014, when the Report is published later this year.
