Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, I will deal with the point raised by Senator Quinn. We introduced an audit exemption, for example, which was about removing smaller companies, and we enhanced that last year. We look for that wherever we can. When it comes to environmental standards or wage rates there are certain criteria one expects to apply whether one is a large or small company. However, there is scope in the area. The EU is anxious to examine de minimis exemptions. I do not know how far the talks have got in that regard. What we have been doing is simplifying the entire licensing regime, but it is a reasonable point and we could do work on it to see whether there are areas we have missed where one could have a lesser requirement for smaller businesses. I am not familiar with the French example. Is it outside of the audit requirements in that it would not impact on public health or welfare? I would be interested to examine the situation and perhaps to have a look at the French case.

The high level group on regulation has business representation. The purpose of that is to churn up areas where we can identify changes. Last year we reformed the wage-setting mechanisms, which were very much a problem in the retail sector where one had different parts of it having to observe different rules. We have tried to simplify that and to have more uniform rules.

One could only implement a change on upward-only rent reviews if the State intended to compensate the landlord that was obliged to reduce the rent. We did examine the situation. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, examined the position, as did the Attorney General and others in order to see whether a system could be devised but that was the bottom line and the taxpayer simply could not afford to pay compensation to landlords.

On the positive side, NAMA agreed to go ahead with the approach considered, namely, where companies could demonstrate they were in difficulties that it would agree to renegotiate terms. NAMA has renegotiated more than 270 leases on the basis of the commitment. Other work is ongoing in terms of having greater transparency in the registering of rents. Some progress is being made. Rents are being renegotiated but, as we have seen, sometimes they are only renegotiated by the larger groups by going into examinership. It is a continuing problem but it is not one that the taxpayer can deal with. The taxpayer is trying to deal with a lot of issues and this was one that could not be changed without the taxpayer paying compensation, which was not on.

In response to the points made by Deputy Conaghan on the statistics on participation, the PRSI scheme had approximately 1,000 people on it but the ambition was to have 10,000. The Revenue job assist scheme had approximately 700 to 800 on it. It is a much older scheme and, typically, had very little take-up over its long life. The scheme had been going for years and dates back to the previous recession. The reason the schemes were not successful is that there were too many boxes to be ticked. One had to show the job would endure, wait until one returned one's income tax and got the tax relief on the Revenue job assist, which could be a year later, and if one was not in profit one would get nothing.

There were a lot of “hand trips” that made it difficult to use those schemes. This one will be simpler. From the point of view of people who are unemployed, as Deputy Tóibín or another member indicated, the advantage is that a person who is 12 months out of work, in effect, can go to an employer confident in the knowledge that there is a €75 a week coupon if they recruit the person coming back to the employer. It changes the conversation a bit, whereas with many employers if one had been out of work for so many months one would not be considered. They would only look to someone who had a CV with a relatively small gap in it.

On unemployment black spots, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, has included measures in the Finance Bill to address such areas in Limerick and Waterford. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, through Intreo, the new employment service, is focused on unemployment black spots. In my area it is focused in Coolock where there is a higher level of unemployment. The work is only in its infancy but the concept is to have much earlier engagement with people and to give them options. The intention is to make the welfare system support the development of the person who has lost his or her job instead of the traditional approach where one only accessed the welfare system if one could show one was idle. The aim is to change the dynamic that was in the system. I hope that will have an impact.

The Commission for the Economic Development of Rural Areas has been set up but Deputy Conaghan was not referring to black spots in rural areas. The development of the new interventions through the Intreo service will promote the likes of Momentum, Springboard and JobBridge. There is now a much better menu of interventions that will be more relevant than community employment, CE, schemes were in the past. The key feature of the new interventions is to try to get people closer to the labour market. The new schemes are closer to employment opportunities. There has been an increase in participation in schemes, for example, 6,500 in Momentum, an additional 2,000 on JobBridge and a further 7,500 on other programmes, including local authority employment programmes. I hope the additional range of activity will be relevant to areas of high levels of unemployment.

On the health hub, a pilot scheme of a virtual hub has been established in Cork. Essentially the idea was to bring businesses with new technologies and test them in a real-life situation in hospitals where a new service or technology could be test-bedded and then it would become a reference point for international sales. That is the model that has been used. It has been very successful in Cork and we are now looking at taking it to a national scale.

That could be on the cards but we must do more work to decide how to embed this. Bringing some of the best medical devices companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and consultants together is win-win situation. That is what the hub is trying to do.