TWICE THE SIZE - DIT Update - Dublin Institute of Technology

20. Small business in Ireland is big business. Over 97% of businesses in Ireland are
Wild Cards
‘small’ (employing fewer than fifty people) and they employ 777,000 people. In
many ways, the health of the small business sector is both an indicator of the
condition of the whole economy and a determination of that condition. A number of
issues face the small business sector including: burdensome and costly
administrative regulations; rising local authority charges; poor access to information
and advice; inadequate infrastructure; difficulty in accessing finance; weak
management capability; lack of innovation; under-exploitation of ICT; and the lack
of a systematic approach to entrepreneurship. The small business sector in Ireland
is the potential engine for growth for the future of the Irish economy.
Some potential ‘wild cards’ are:
Emerging markets fail to reform their financial institutions.
Worldwide stock market crash.
Collapse of a giant global corporation.
China and India fail to sustain high growth.
Internet disintegration.
GOVERNANCE CHANGE
In that virtually all the other major drivers of change are influenced by the decisions of people,
for good or bad, governance, in all its dimensions, is perhaps the overriding driver of all. States
might continue to be the dominant players on the world stage in 2030, but governments will
have less and less control over flows of information, technology, diseases, migrants, arms and
financial transactions, whether licit or illicit, across their borders. Non-state actors, ranging
from commercial corporations to voluntary organisations, will play increasingly larger roles in
both national and international affairs. The nature and quality of governance, globally and
locally, will substantially determine how well communities at all scales cope with future global
change.
Global Context
The ten most significant global governance trend drivers and issues have been identified as
follows.
1. Governmentally, the degree of direct influence that national governments exercise
over people’s actions, social problems, economic performance and corporate power
will lessen. Power will pass upwards to supra-national bodies and downwards to
subsidiary authorities at regional, federal, provincial, state or city level.
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