Enterprise Support Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13
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Peter Burke (FG), Longford-Westmeath

I want to come back to the Deputy with evidence and factual data. For every company that goes into liquidation in the economy now, ten more are created. We are at an all-time low in terms of insolvency levels. The CSO data, which is the gold standard of collecting evidence in this economy, backs that up.
The Deputy should have a look at the December outturn and the summary of our economic position. All 13 sectors of the economy are growing. We are at a record level of employment. Some 2.82 million people are going to work this week in the economy.
The Deputy has seen the increase in wages, which is not driving essentially a low-cost economy. We have good well-paid jobs in the economy. As I said, there has been a 45% increase in the weekly wage since 2015.
We want to bring more high-value jobs into the economy. Look at the data – Irish-born firms have had a record year of €36 billion of exports. It never happened before. It broke all records for Enterprise Ireland. The economy is performing strongly. There are challenges and costs are high, but we are doing our very best to address those on foot of the cost of business advisory forum and our small business unit. We are working night and day to try to bring in further sustainability grants to help them over the long term.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-13