Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Murphy and Mr. Talbot. In the interests of transparency I must declare that I worked for the organisation prior to being elected to the Dáil.

I welcome the plan. Everybody around the table agrees on the importance of small and medium enterprises. I will start with point 11 of the ten point plan and I am surprised Chambers Ireland forgot about it. This is the issue of credit. Will the witnesses give us an update on the availability of credit to Chambers Ireland members? Reference was made to the poor uptake of the schemes and we are anxious to discover why the schemes are not going down as well as everybody thought they would. Will the witnesses give us feedback on this?

With regard to the proposals on town centres, a double rent reduction is proposed for those on upward-only rent reviews. Will the witnesses outline how this would work practically and who would be in charge of implementing it? I would also like to hear their thoughts on upward-only rent reviews generally. Chambers Ireland proposes a targeted rates reduction, and it seems to go for the French model as opposed to the model in operation in Northern Ireland, the so-called "Tesco tax". Will the witnesses outline the difference between the two and the reasons for Chambers Ireland's preference?

The committee is doing much work on procurement at present and we are all in favour of jobs. Does Chambers Ireland have specific recommendations on procurement? When the Office of Public Works and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform come before the committee they tell us their hands are tied by EU procurement rules and that they cannot get around them. Does Chambers Ireland have specific thoughts on this? I welcome the idea of joined-up government and the issue of procurement shows we do not have this. Chambers Ireland has pointed this out. Do the witnesses have any thoughts on breaking down the silos in government?

Did Chambers Ireland manage to maintain revenue neutrality throughout the document? What is the overall cost of implementation of the ten point plan?