Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not have that information to hand. Generally speaking, throughout all sectors there are approximately 180,000 small and medium sized enterprises and approximately 4,000 large companies. I suspect that a move to include much smaller companies as well as the large ones would dramatically widen the purview of the legislation. It would widen the chain dramatically. The purpose of this legislation is to deal with abusive practices that are essentially related to market power. If we reduce the threshold to encompass smaller companies in the way that has been proposed, we will move away from the purpose of these regulations, which is to grapple with the fact that strong players are in a position to dictate or change terms at will. I think that is the balance here. I am sure we can seek some information for the Deputy. For example, we can get the data published by the Central Statistics Office.