Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the IBEC representatives and thank them for the efforts they have made to bring forward positive suggestions with regard to the growth of the economy.

At the start, I suppose I could agree with Mr. O'Brien that the emphasis needs to be on growth and away from austerity, and that one of the most important elements of the economy right now is expectations. If people believe that tomorrow will be worse than today, there will be no spending. If people believe that tomorrow will be a better day, that expectations element is really important.

While IBEC is against new additional taxes, what is its view on types of taxes such as the water charge and property tax which are not dependent on income? IBEC’s analysis referred to significant gains in employment in the hospitality sector. Can the delegation go into more detail on this?

Our focus has been on reducing businesses’ cost base before looking at employment costs, because a significant element of society is in poverty. For example, electricity and diesel costs are the fourth highest in Europe. There are also issues such as high charges for professional services, rents and rates. However, sometimes the average wage cost hides the distribution of wages. One could have variability between upper and lower wages but still have a high average wage. Does the delegation have any information on this?

The largest take-up of research and development has been with multinationals. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, are key to economic growth. There is a danger that export growth could be jobs free. The SME sector is critical for job creation. How can we incentivise more take-up of research and development by our indigenous SME sector?

Chambers Ireland also proposed a cut in the capital gains tax rate. IBEC proposed an incentive scheme to allow for re-investment of capital gains profits into business. Could the delegation give more detail on how this incentive would work to get entrepreneurs to lock such gains into re-investment?