Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 4 November 2015
2. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the initiatives he will take to ensure large strategically important events such as the Web Summit can be retained in this country. [37224/15]
View answerThe Web Summit is one of the most important business events in the State. Not only does it bring about 40,000 people to Dublin city, but it also offers start-ups an opportunity to network with tech leaders and venture capitalists who are looking to invest money. The Taoiseach has said the 2014 Web Summit was worth €104 million to Dublin city. It is, therefore, a flagship event. Its loss not only represents a loss of revenue to the capital but is also a huge blow to Irish start-ups and the country's reputation. Why did the Minister drop the ball and ignore this opportunity?
My Department and agencies use a range of opportunities to showcase Ireland by hosting or partnering in national and international events that support our overarching policy objectives across our core programmes of enterprise, innovation and regulation. Last week we welcomed over 800 attendees from 43 countries to the Med in Ireland event and the Innovation Showcase 2015 will be taking place on 8 December following a successful launch last year. In January a major conference on financial services will be hosted in Dublin, organised by my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Simon Harris.
My ministerial colleagues and I, with the agencies of my Department, also participate in many third party events that take place in Ireland, similar to the Web Summit, and we will continue to provide assistance and attendance, where appropriate. Between 2011 and 2014 my Department's agencies provided €880,000 in support for the Web Summit.
The Startup Gathering is a recent example of the potential to host and grow events in Ireland, with close to 400 gatherings in 22 counties. This week also sees the first ever National Digital Week taking place in Skibbereen, with over 3,000 attendees and 60 speakers from both the private and public sector.
Annually, Ireland is the location of choice for many international conferences and events in a wide range of sectors. Our offering as a location is marketed through the brand “Meet in Ireland” which is supported by a dedicated team in Fáilte Ireland.
It is, of course, disappointing that the organisers of the Web Summit have decided to move the event, but it is a commercial decision. The Government has been supportive throughout as the company, an Irish start-up, grew from an event that initially only welcomed 400 people to the success it is today. A commercial decision has been taken to move it to another location. Both IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland have had remarkable success in developing start-ups and emerging companies and will continue to do so.
I am quite amazed that the Minister has not addressed the Web Summit issue. He mentioned it in three sentences in a very generalised fashion. The release of e-mails between the Government and Mr. Paddy Cosgrave gives a rare insight into how the Government operates. Mr. Cosgrave has repeatedly said all he wants to do is keep the Web Summit in Ireland. That was his objective. All that it was necessary to do was to ensure proper traffic management and public transport plans were in place. People who had spent money to get to Dublin could not even get to the conference centre owing to the fact that there was total gridlock. Mr. Cosgrave also wanted to make sure the hotel industry was not gouging, at a rate of 600%, in order that people could afford to come. These were simple issues with which to deal, but none of them seems to have been addressed by the Government.
As regards the process in which Mr. Cosgrave was involved with the Government, the e-mails show a laissez-faire attitude, a lack of engagement and dysfunction at the heart of government in dealing with this issue. I simply ask the Minister to answer these questions. Was he aware of the breakdown in communications? Was he aware of the role of the enterprise agencies involved? If so, what steps did he take to fix it?
I am acutely aware of the role the enterprise agencies have played. They take every chance to successfully exploit opportunities presented by summits, conferences and other events.
Was the Minister aware of the breakdown in communications?
In the past four years they have successfully created 40,000 net additional jobs, many of them in start-up companies. Dublin is now recognised as an excellent start-up environment, which has been part of the reason for the successful attraction of the Web Summit. There is such a vibrant environment here for start-ups which has been created by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. Both agencies have used the Web Summit to identify leads and organise itineraries. This happens all the time. However, when a decision is made to take such a conference to another location, it does not in any way, as the start-up commissioner for Dublin has indicated, diminish the capacity of the city to support strong start-ups. IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland will continue their record levels of performance in the past couple of years. Both bodies have dealt adequately and perfectly with this matter.
By his answer the Minister has massively devalued this Chamber and citizens outside who are seeking answers. I asked him if he was aware of the breakdown in communications and the problems arising.
The Minister has not even attempted to say he is aware of it. If we cannot understand and critique the problems, how are we supposed to fix them?
On "Morning Ireland" yesterday, Paddy Cosgrave went even further. He mentioned the €800,000 received in terms of hush money. Essentially, he said the Web Summit was supposed to lavish praise on the Government for what it did but for four years behind the scenes, he went back and forth to try to push the Government time and again to realise the opportunity and make sure things were fixed. Shockingly, he said Ministers were only interested in attending on an invite basis and only to have photographs taken. He also said that Enterprise Ireland had not engaged properly in the process. He said it invested money, created logos and created spin but had not used the event properly. What physical steps will the Minister take to reach out and fix this problem? We may have lost the 2016 Web Summit but what steps will he take to ensure the 2017 Web Summit is in Dublin? I ask him to answer the question directly.
The Government will support any initiative to develop conferences that support the growth of our enterprise sector. The Deputy's original question asked what we were doing in that area and I illustrated the many examples-----
Not the Web Summit.
-----such as the Startup Gathering we have. I am sure there will be successors to the Web Summit in Dublin because Dublin has such a vibrant environment. Just as we supported it in the past, we will support such an initiative again.
I completely reject the suggestion that Enterprise Ireland and the IDA have not used the Web Summit effectively. Only last week I was in the USA on a trade mission and the IDA took the opportunity to organise itineraries around a number of people who planned to visit the Web Summit. We do not work in a blaze of publicity; rather, we work confidentially with companies to develop programmes. The Deputy should look at the figures. The IDA and Enterprise Ireland have used their resources to achieve record job creation in Ireland over the past four years. They have never been performing at a higher level than they are now.
