With the permission of the House, we will now take Question No. 4. Deputy Mattie McGrath was attending a meeting of the Business Committee.
Thursday, 18 January 2018
Questions (4)
Oral answers (9 contributions)
Mattie McGrath
Question:4. Deputy Mattie McGrath asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the core priorities of his Department with respect to the ongoing challenges presented by Brexit; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2609/18]
View answerMy apologies. I was attending a meeting of the Business Committee. What are the Minister's priorities in respect of the ongoing Brexit debate? This issue is hugely worrying for many.
As the Deputy will be aware, the Government is adopting a whole of Government approach to the challenges posed by Brexit. Our objectives are to minimise the impact of Brexit on trade and the economy, to protect the Northern Ireland peace process, to maintain the common travel area and to influence the future direction of the European Union.
Brexit issues in my Department are co-ordinated by the Department’s Brexit-EU-North-South unit. This unit supports me in my work on Brexit, leads Brexit work across the Department and represents the Department on the various groups that co-ordinate the Government’s response.
The Government’s response to Brexit involves continuing to manage the economy and the public finances carefully, negotiating effectively as part of the EU 27 while at the same time supporting and ensuring a strong and well-functioning EU, continuing support for business and our economy, and exploring existing and potential EU measures that could assist Ireland in mitigating the effects of Brexit. In supporting these objectives, the best and most immediate policy under my own control is to manage our public finances carefully.
Additionally, in budget 2018 I announced a number of measures which continue the process of making Ireland Brexit-ready. These include a new Brexit loan scheme of up to €300 million for SMEs. I have already seen the advertising for such funds commence. The measures also include the establishment of a rainy day fund, additional capital expenditure of more than €4 billion over the next four years, increased funding in Departments such as the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and increased allocations in Departments such as the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation to allow them to respond to many of the challenges created by Brexit.
I congratulate the Government on the first round of the negotiations. They were very iffy and up and down and I acknowledge that they worked out reasonably well after a lot of careful and arduous work and a bit of blunt talking. Now, however, we are down to the next phase, which is very serious. I welcome the funds announced by the Minister and the advertising because we need to see them being advertised. I am not saying it should be loose money but we also need to see that there is not too much bureaucracy involved in accessing funds, especially for farmers that have a lot of exports to the UK, which is most farmers. Neither can it be too bureaucratic for SMEs that export. Every day since we came back and for two or three months before we went on break we have been in here talking about delayed farm payments due to computer glitches and other issues, which is not good enough. There is a lot of uncertainty and people need the supports to be as readily available as possible. They need to be forearmed and ready for whatever negative impacts may occur.
On the availability of funds, only last weekend I saw advertising from Enterprise Ireland encouraging SMEs to access the Agile Innovation fund. This fund is designed to support SMEs make the necessary changes to get ready for Brexit. I emphasise that the responsibility for making those changes sits first with those who run and own these companies. We will do as much as we can but I am concerned that the scale of the challenges approaching all of us as Brexit develops in whatever shape it may take has to be broadly understood by those involved in running small and medium-sized businesses. We have opened the fund to support them in their work and we will, as announced in the budget, put in place an additional fund which is aimed at Irish agriculture in particular. The Taoiseach addressed the IFA on Tuesday night to ensure its members of our understanding of their difficulties as well as the opportunities available, and our desire to support its members and Irish farming in responding to the grave challenges that could develop.
There are organisations other than the IFA which represent the agriculture sector and smaller farmers as well. The Minister referred to agility. Most small business people are very agile because they have to be. It is not easy to keep an SME running and to keep all the balls in the air. They, therefore, do not need that kind of a response. The money may be advertised - many schemes are advertised - but then there is the form filling, red tape and bureaucracy that has taken over our system. The Minister can roll his eyes up to heaven if he likes but those are the facts. Even for community organisations it is bucketloads and acre loads of paper. They just get weary and walk away from it. We need less of the red tape and we need the supports now.
I see the able Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Boxer Moran, is giving the Minister a bit of sound advice. He knows how to deal with it. He gets out on the ground and does it, and he does it every day of the week. We saw him all over the Christmas break looking after people. Make it easier for people to get access. Further, remember that Enterprise Ireland only supports companies that meet its threshold on the number of employees. I am talking about small SMEs with between one and ten employees, that is, those involving a person with perhaps his wife and family. Those are the people whom we need to support. Not everyone comes within the ambit of Enterprise Ireland which I think requires companies to have 200 or more employees.
I was just trying to maintain eye contact with the Deputy but I will look up at the sky in the future.
I missed that. I do not know what the Minister said.
In terms of the Deputy's observations, if we were not advertising the funding, he would accuse us of not doing anything and of not making potential customers aware of a fund we have set up. Therefore, we did that. On helping people access funds, Enterprise Ireland is trying to make it as simple and as clear as possible for people to access the funding. I am aware that there are organisations other than the IFA. For example, I met representatives from the ICMSA in the run-up to the budget and I know the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, is working hard to try to ensure that we have the right funds and supports in place. Bord Bia published a report last week and I am greatly encouraged that we were able to point to another year in which Irish farmers and the agriculture sector have delivered improved sales to the UK and elsewhere of the exceptionally high-quality produce being produced.