Ms Patricia Callan:

Essentially we have two key principles in our budget submission this year. The first is that the budget ensures businesses can retain and create jobs. The way to do that is not to increase the cost of doing business. Second, we need measures to support the restoration of consumer confidence in the domestic market. With regard to the cost of employment, the budget is all about the threats rather than necessarily what we want in it. The kites that have been flown so far have destroyed investment and expansion in the interim because people are so worried about measures such as employer's PRSI increasing, mandatory pension provision and the transfer of four weeks of sick pay onto employers. Anything that adds to the cost of hiring somebody will militate against employers creating jobs in exactly the same fashion as the slashing of the redundancy rebate last year killed off the transfer of businesses. One cannot buy a business now because the risks are too high. We want the Government to job-proof all policies and to make an assessment of the impact on jobs of the implementation of various measures. That is the key and critical message. We have many tax proposals in the submission that might help small businesses, in particular in the area of finance and improving cashflow, and I can take questions about those, but the key message is not to increase costs.