FocuSME Editor, Kehlan Kirwan, replies to Fine Gael T.D. John Perry's recently released document on Small Business.
Hi John,
Interesting reading on small business report you sent me.
My own view would be that you have good general policies, but I think above anything you need to make promises that you will implement fully, even if you have to reduce the stats or funding. Small business has had to many broken promises, at to high a cost.
We need to increase the amount of tenders that small business gets from state and semi state bodies. Governmental bodies have an extremely poor record when it comes tendering out to small businesses. You can't say you support business and then ignore them in the most obvious of ways. An achievable goal would be get somewhere between 30%-40% of tenders going to small businesses. We must openly promote and provide for small business in a very public way. Instead of simply saying we have this plan or that plan, show people with tangible figures- ' Here look, this IS what we are doing for small domestic business' instead of ' This is what we COULD do for small business'.
Hi John,
Interesting reading on small business report you sent me.
My own view would be that you have good general policies, but I think above anything you need to make promises that you will implement fully, even if you have to reduce the stats or funding. Small business has had to many broken promises, at to high a cost.
We need to increase the amount of tenders that small business gets from state and semi state bodies. Governmental bodies have an extremely poor record when it comes tendering out to small businesses. You can't say you support business and then ignore them in the most obvious of ways. An achievable goal would be get somewhere between 30%-40% of tenders going to small businesses. We must openly promote and provide for small business in a very public way. Instead of simply saying we have this plan or that plan, show people with tangible figures- ' Here look, this IS what we are doing for small domestic business' instead of ' This is what we COULD do for small business'.
We must find newer/different ways for investment to happen. This means getting existing big companies to re-invest profits back into the Irish economy. Currently multi-national companies have over €150bn in financial accounts at the IFSC in Dublin. We must encourage these businesses to invest some of that money into Irish companies through R&D or bolstering investment. The advantages of this are two fold- 1) Irish companies now have assured investment to work and strive for 2) The pressure is released on the government to provide money to small business, allowing it target other places for the money to go to.
Reform of the Enterprise Boards/Enterprise Ireland etc. is essential. For this to happen they must be given definitive goals and targets to be met. Give the Enterprise Boards a structure to adhere to. e.g. 40% of allocated funds for the year must go to manufacturing, 10% to professional services, a percentage to go to other sectors which must be considered the future of Ireland. Allow money from the enterprise boards to roll over to the next year. Money is being wasted on poor projects because they must 'get rid' of the money they have been allocated. Make the decision process with board members public- virtually eliminating conflict of interest problems that arise in the process.
Last of all the Banks- You must be better involved within the financial institutions. If it means physically putting people into the HQ of banks then so be it. The credit flowing to small business has been nothing short of disgraceful the past two years. Give them targets to lend and enforce it. Its been quite obvious that 'asking' banks to lend will not work. You must enforce your will on banks that we virtually own. It is simply not good enough to ask the Irish public to take the brunt of the damage through job loss and bailouts and allow the banking system to avoid investment in business and job creation.
Those are just some of my views. I appreciate you sending the document to me and I enjoyed reading it.
Remember that SMEs need action, not talk. If you give small business a chance, you'll get big results.
Regards,
Kehlan Kirwan
Editor, Focusme Magazine
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