Mr. Joe Sweeney:

The scale of the problems facing independent retailers is getting worse, not better. Since 2008, job losses have continued to rise and employment across the entire retail sector has experienced a decline of 47,000 jobs from a peak of 314,000. Within the retail sector, 86% of retailers have fewer than ten employees and the members of our federation would often fall into this category. Unfortunately, we are all too familiar with announcements in the media of large numbers of job losses but what is not captured is the one or two employees sadly let go in small, independent shops all over the country.

The combined total of these losses is often greater than the number of jobs lost when, for example, a factory or large business of any description closes. It gets wide media publicity but the small number of jobs lost in independent retailers does not seem to matter. Equally important is the effect this has on communities across the country. While the shop is a business it is also an integral part of both urban and rural life. Many independent shops are family run businesses. There is a real sadness felt locally when a business of this kind closes its doors.

NFRN Ireland strongly believes in working with Government to help the Oireachtas overcome the many challenges it is faced with. All the proposals in this presentation are solutions that we believe will help independent retailers remain in business and keep their staff employed. As my colleague has already stated, the proposals are also meant to create jobs in the economy and we all want that.

One of our largest problems is dealing with the black market and illicit trade in Ireland. We have a number of inexpensive suggestions to put forward which we feel are very effective solutions to curbing the black market. I will not go through them all now but when we get into conversation we will discuss them openly. Examples are enforcing existing law completely banning the sale of illicit products at markets and, very importantly, using modern technology to fight this business. These illicit traders are well equipped with modern technology because of the profits they are making from the black market. We need to step up and start using modern technology to fight this illicit trade. My colleague, Mr. John Prendergast, will describe some of those technologies in detail in a few moments.

We insist that the Government invest money in more port scanners to fight the influx of illicit products into the country. Regarding keeping SMEs in business and creating jobs, we want the Government to examine introducing a rates relief scheme for small businesses. We will describe that in detail later on. We would like the Government to examine the difficulties retailers and small businesses have getting finance. That will be very important to keep people in business and to maintain and create jobs.