Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise. With regard to smart regulation, the committee has ongoing discussions about the burden of regulation, which is a very serious issue for business in this country. Deputy Lawlor has done some tracking and much of it comes from Europe. We seem to be determined to implement to the bone every regulation coming from Europe. The debate on regulation has gone on for many years and the conclusions of the Council in February 2012 called on the Commission to improve the smart regulation agenda further by keeping engineers, end-users and businesses in mind, which is nice. These are the people who must pay to implement these regulations. In many cases the burden of regulation is forcing people to give up. It has become so heavy that people would rather close shop than have to take on the expense of it. While many of the regulations are necessary and worthy, the notion of keeping the user in mind sums up for me how the real business people and employment creators - neither officials nor politicians create jobs - are at the back of the queue.

Every country in Europe, particularly those in the programme, have serious unemployment issues and there is no sense of a plan coming from Europe to address them. I get a sense that member states are very much being left to their own devices. In the next session we will speak about the adequacy of the response here. When we, and previous presidencies under the Cypriots and the Danes, make unemployment a priority, it creates an expectation among people that something is about to be done, but nothing is done and it moves on to the next Presidency. At the end of our term, as the Secretary General of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation what does Mr. Murphy think will be achieved which will result in job creation in this country?