Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a number of questions for the three delegations. Sinn Féin agrees with the need for a reduction of the overall adjustment required and if the Government listens to that call, we may be in a better place this time next year. We also agree with the retention of a 9% VAT rate. Two or three of the submissions made have mentioned that this rate has been beneficial. I will come back to this issue later because there have been some questions on it. Somebody mentioned that based on the lower rate, some 25,000 jobs were created. How many of those jobs are full-time jobs? Are many of them casual, part-time jobs that we associate with the hospitality industry? In terms of costs, is there any estimate of the financial benefit, other than the employment benefit, of retaining the 9% rate?

One of the difficulties I have with some of the submissions is that the proposals made do not include costs. One suggestion was to extend the 9% rate beyond the hospitality industry, but what would that cost the Exchequer over a full year? Mention was made of the cash-accountancy threshold and of its being changed to €2.5 million. How would that help members and how many SMEs would benefit from such a change? It sounds like a logical proposal and it is stated that it would have a zero cost overall. How many companies would benefit and what would the full benefit of the measure be?

I have a question for Chambers Ireland regarding corporation tax. Is there scope to provide for larger companies to pay a higher effective rate? We have debated the 12.5% rate and during the year we had discussion on the fact that some of the larger companies do not pay that rate whereas smaller companies do. Is there a desire in Chambers Ireland or any of the groups represented here to move towards an effective rate of 12.5% rather than a position in which some firms subsidise others?

Much of the comment and many of the proposals from the Small Firms Association related to social welfare. I disagree with some of the comments. While I accept that some of them may be true, the fault does not lie with those on social welfare. In some ways, it does not even lie with this or previous governments. Some of the fault lies with those who are in control of rented properties, particularly in Dublin and Galway, who have continually inflated rents in the private sector. This affects those who are on rent allowance renting in the sector. Rent allowance is a large portion of the secondary benefit mentioned. The rent issue needs to be addressed. Landlords should be persuaded to buy into the other schemes operated by local authorities, such as the RAS scheme. This would substantially reduce the disincentive mentioned. Any investigation would discover that the greatest disincentive to returning to work is either child care costs, which have not been addressed by the current or previous governments, or the failure to provide social housing. We must ensure that the rent allowance system operates properly or that local authorities run proper rental accommodation schemes.

Another issue is that of upward-only rent reviews. This question was raised in the general election and before it, but it seems no longer to be a key demand. Some people say the issue is constitutional. We are going to the polls in a short time and if the Government had been committed to dealing with the issue, it could have done so at that time. I have asked repeatedly whether the Government was going to address the issue by changing the Constitution and have been told "No." In the past year, I have not heard any calls from the business sector for the issue to be addressed. We have seen some larger companies here go into receivership or manage to negotiate by threatening to go into receivership. Some of them have been successful. Some companies have gone into receivership or put people on short term or laid them off.

The company obviously benefits but workers are laid off. That is one of the problems.

There has been a focus on domestic loans and mortgages and so on. From dealing with small companies, I know that they have major debt problems and, in some cases, they cannot get the loans they need to continue in operation. What is the state of play in that regard? How are small firms dealing with the banks? Are they managing to negotiate with them, or is it similar to the position on mortgages for households where the banks sit back and wait for the insolvency process?

My last questions are for IBEC. The representatives of the social NGOs this morning provided a cost estimate for their proposals. Will we see this from IBEC and the other groups represented? The NGOs are able to do this with very limited resources. I am not saying IBEC has unlimited resources, but it can call on greater expertise than some of the groups referred to. Do the representatives from IBEC accept that unemployment is sky high and probably being reduced through a high level of emigration and an increase in the number of part-time workers? Are we seeing a complete change in the nature of Ireland's workforce wherein it is becoming more casual? With the rise of zero hour contracts, we could be back to where we were in 1913 when workers would come in on a Monday morning and the employer would pick up some of them for the week. There also seems to be an increase in the level of dependency on the likes of JobBridge, JobPlus and other subsidised employment by the State. If we want a stimulus in the economy, we cannot be depending on these schemes in the future.