Mr. A. J. Noonan:

We concur with everything Mr. Talbot said. Our biggest fear is that there will be increases in employment costs. The flag that was flown last week about increasing PRSI for the self-employed was foolish, given the current state of the economy.

Capital gains tax has increased by 40% in the last couple of budgets. We have an innovative idea with regard to roll-over relief. In its previous incarnation, when the tax was 40%, there was roll-over relief. It was reduced to 20% and roll-over relief was abolished. Now it is back up in that league and we suggest something should be done in the area of the incentives provided in the past for qualifying enterprises, with a very narrow focus to encourage entrepreneurship.

Under the access to funding heading, we understand there is a need for a State bank, as stated in the programme for Government. While the banks are making slow progress, we believe they could go a great deal further. There is a review taking place of the employment and investment incentive scheme, EIIS. At one stage - Mr. Seán Murphy of Chambers Ireland will agree with me on this - there was €150 million drawn down under the scheme. It is now down to €20 million. It is obviously not working. A review is taking place and we encourage it to broaden the scheme to make it work.

The Government introduced the partial guarantee scheme last year. Again, there is a review taking place. Somebody compared it to giving birth and leaving the child to starve. It is not working and we do not know why. The banks do not appear to be very enthusiastic about it. Our recommendation is that where the banks will give somebody 70%, we must figure out how to get the other 30% for projects that are worthwhile in terms of entrepreneurship, job creation and growth. If we were to achieve this, it would be very positive.