The White Paper on Enterprise and What It Means for Irish Business

In this address to the IIEA, Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment delivers a keynote address discussing the recently published White Paper on Enterprise 2022-2030 and its implications for SMEs and multinationals based in Ireland. Following this, the event features a panel discussion during which Martina Fitzgerald, CEO of Scale Ireland, and Dr Frances Ruane, Chair of the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, who respond to the Minister's presentation and share their perspectives on the White Paper. The event will be chaired by Dan O’Brien, IIEA Chief Economist. About the Speakers: Simon Coveney TD is the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, appointed in December 2022. He is also the Deputy Leader of Fine Gael. He has served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2017 to 2022 and Minister for Defence from 2020 to 2022. Between November 2017 and June 2020, he also held the office of Tánaiste. He has previously served as Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government from 2016 to 2017, Minister for Defence from 2014 to 2016, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine from 2011 to 2016. Martina Fitzgerald is CEO of Scale Ireland, the independent not-for-profit organisation representing Irish tech start-up and scaling companies. There are currently more than 2,200 tech start-up companies in Ireland, employing more than 50,000 people around the country. Martina is also actively involved in the global and European networks of start-up organisations and has contributed to many of the pan-European initiatives. Martina is also a board member of Dóchas, the Irish association of international development and humanitarian organisations. Prior to 2019, Martina was a leading national journalist, including as Political Correspondent with Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, and the author of a critically acclaimed best-selling book, Madam Politician, on the subject of Irish female government ministers. Dan O'Brien is Chief Economist of the Institute of International and European Affairs. He is also Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at University College Dublin’s Geary Institute and a regular media commentator on economic and public policy issues. For three years, from mid-2010, Dan was economics editor of The Irish Times, analysing and commenting on a wide range of Irish, European and global issues. Prior to that, he spent a dozen years, based in London and Geneva, as senior economist and editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, an arm of The Economist Newspaper Group. Dan has also worked for the European Commission and as a consultant for the United Nations and Forfás, an Irish government in-house think tank. Frances Ruane is an Honorary Fellow at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and a Research Affiliate at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). She is Chair of the National Competitiveness Council and represents Ireland on the European Productivity Network. An economist, she held academic and senior administrative positions at TCD between 1977 and 2006, and was Director of the ESRI from 2006 to 2015. Her research interests are in economic development, international economics and public policy, and she has published widely in these areas. Frances was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2003 and served as President of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland from 2016-2019.