AmCham Meets with Government ahead of Budget 2024

AmCham, this week, met with Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath and Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery, and Reform, Paschal Donohoe to discuss its 2024 Pre-Budget Submission, entitled, ‘Building an Impactful Ireland – For 2050 and Beyond'.

Focusing on the need for investment in infrastructure and capacity building, AmCham outlined the importance of delivering the necessary capacity to support a growing population, delivering housing and amenities to support future development, and reforming Ireland’s planning system to provide certainty of timeframe, address backlogs, and provide increased transparency.

In supporting regional development, AmCham raised the importance of investment in key infrastructural and transport projects to support the attractiveness of Ireland’s regions as destinations for FDI and for talent. AmCham further outlined the need for urgent acceleration and expansion of investment in the energy grid to provide for the existing and future energy needs of businesses and of our communities. 

Looking to Ireland’s potential in terms of green energy, AmCham highlighted the importance of increasing the development of renewable energy sources to harness Ireland’s capacity to not only be self-sufficient in terms of renewable energy production but also to become an exporter of green energy.

In enhancing Ireland’s research ecosystem, AmCham discussed the importance of delivering a best-in-class strategy for digital manufacturing, and of attracting world-class researchers and educators into Ireland’s tertiary education system. Furthermore, given the scale of international tax changes, AmCham raised the need to enhance the R&D tax credit to support Ireland’s continued attractiveness as a location for inward investment. AmCham has advocated for the tax credit to be increased from 25 percent to 30 percent.

With regard to digital transformation, given the significant presence of companies operating in the digital and data sectors in Ireland, AmCham believes that Ireland has significant potential to be a centre of excellence within Europe in key areas, such as in quantum computing. Furthermore, Ireland has the opportunity to leverage the expertise within MNCs to become number 1 in Europe in areas of digital research and for digital literacy. As such, AmCham advocated in this meeting for the provision and ringfencing of a multi-annual fund to accelerate the National Digital Strategy, with a focus on digital literacy and skills, digitalisation in healthcare, and AI. Additionally, AmCham addressed the need for a focus on digital literacy in primary and post-primary education, for the digitalisation of public services, and for the implementation of a public-cloud first policy.

In relation to cyber security, AmCham highlighted the opportunity that exists for Ireland whereby, with smart policy decisions, Ireland can be a global leader in cyber security. As such, AmCham believes there is a need to increase investment and resourcing to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to adapt to emerging cybersecurity challenges and malicious threats, protect critical national digital services and technology systems. It is essential that resourcing in the NCSC is resilient against attrition of key staff, and that resourcing of digital and cyber skills is a priority for all regulatory bodies. Additionally, AmCham highlighted its view that independent benchmarking of Ireland’s cyber security infrastructure should be commissioned, with a view to international best practice on a tri-annual basis and with swift actions to implement key findings resulting from this.

AmCham was pleased to have a comprehensive discussion with Minister McGrath and Minister Donohoe ahead of Budget 2024 to highlight key needs and priorities for its members. AmCham’s full Budget 2024 submission is available here.

To engage with AmCham on matters related to Budget 2024, please contact Colm O’Callaghan, Director of Public Affairs and Advocacy at c.ocallaghan@amcham.ie.