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Enterprise 2025

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 12 October 2017

Thursday, 12 October 2017

Questions (16)

Niall Collins

Question:

16. Deputy Niall Collins asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation the status of the review Enterprise 2025 in view of Brexit and policy charges under the new US administration. [43164/17]

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Written answers

Enterprise 2025 sets a roadmap for long-term enterprise development and resilience, with the ambition to achieve a step-change in the performance of our enterprises, to build a real and distinctive competitive edge sector-by-sector and to excel in creating a jobs-fit environment with top-3 competitiveness ranking.

The Action Plan for Jobs 2017, which I lead across Government, sets ambitious targets and actions to be delivered as part of Enterprise 2025.

The Review of Enterprise 2025 aims to ensure that our policy framework and priorities are robust and remain current in the uncertain environment. This review is being undertaken in the context of global changes that are likely to have an immediate impact on Ireland's enterprise development, and specifically Brexit and potential policy changes under the new US administration.

In addition the advances in digital technologies continue apace, opening up new market opportunities, spawning new global business models and impacting on every sector of the economy. Such advances can also pose challenges for companies in adopting technologies, whether in the factory or the customer experience centre, and reinforce the need for continuous skills development for those already in the workplace. While we are well placed to respond to these new developments and capture new opportunities, I am conscious that we need to work through, sector by sector, the necessary responses whether that is at firm level, or through investment in our innovation system or education system and that we have effective collaboration between the key stakeholders.

A senior-level Principal Officer forum has been established that includes representatives from a number of key economic government departments and the development agencies. Analysis of performance to date on the targets set shows good performance against the 30 metrics set out in Enterprise 2025 and solid progress on implementation of 56 strategic actions. A more comprehensive review of enterprise performance over the past decade, and since the publication of Enterprise 2025 has recently been completed. Informed by this evidence base, we will engage with industry and other stakeholders to debate the extent to which our priorities remain robust or need a greater emphasis in today's environment.

While there is a need to have a change in emphasis in the context of the highly uncertain external environment, we are continuing to focus on getting the fundamentals of our enterprise policy right as the Government has demonstrated in the Budget 2018 announced on Tuesday this week - including our continued focus on export-led growth, underpinned by investments in innovation and skills to respond to a changing world and our continuing focus on enhancing competitiveness and productivity. We are well placed to take advantage of technological advances, have invested significantly in world class research centres and benefit from having a strong base of both international and Irish technology-rich enterprises.

In today's particularly challenging times, I know that the potential set out in Enterprise 2025 and in the Programme for a Partnership Government for employment, exports, productivity and growth is ambitious. Notwithstanding that uncertain environment we are engaging continuously with enterprise stakeholders and we are taking mitigating action - not only in my Department and enterprise development agencies, but also across Government - so that we can achieve the ambition to create jobs for our people and a higher standard of living for all.

I and my agencies remain focused very clearly on the stretch targets set out in Enterprise 2025, which include reducing unemployment in each region to within one percent of the State average by 2020; achieving export growth in Irish-owned enterprises of 6-8 percent per annum; an increase in the number of startups by 25 percent per annum – startups with better survival rates – this would see us with 15,700 enterprise births a year; a 30 percent increase in the numbers of exporters of scale; an additional 1,080 inward investment projects; a 60 percent increase in EI enterprises spending more than €1m on R&D and winning €3.6bn in R&D related FDI; and, a 25 percent uplift in direct economic expenditures by agency supported companies.

My objective remains to complete this Review by the end of the year - and this review will be complemented by the Action Plan for Jobs 2018.

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