Ms Nicola Byrne:

I will cover the universal social charge, USC, because that is the one I almost took personally. Over the years our business has gone from 110 jobs to approximately 70, and there are many part-time workers included in that. When the USC was announced, I thought the Minister must be kidding. It is as if he segregated a part of society and said: "You have worked your butt off for eight years and you might get to the point where your salary might just barely tip that". Then I thought of my 26 year old employee who might go off to earn close to that figure as an employee for a multinational. However, I have taken all of this pain and risk, but the Government goes out of its way to create a category that targets just me. I thought, "You must be kidding me".

The Government's policy is for the IDA to bring multinationals into the country. We seek to put packages and deals together to entice them to this country to create the jobs. We need all of that and I am not seeking that we discriminate against it. I do not wish to have anybody remove anything we are currently doing. However, the Government must be realistic. It expects 10% to 15% of people to employ themselves in this country - there are 700,000 people who work for themselves - and that is a large amount of the population. It has basically told them that there is a tax just to attack them if they earn more than €100,000 and are working for themselves. At the same time, the IDA is going abroad and bringing in business with millions of euro worth of tax breaks and lower cost premises, on the basis of a guarantee of 2,000 jobs. One must wonder why one has been discriminated against. One is a citizen, one has paid taxes all one's life and one has done nothing but work. One pays tax into the tax system, pays one's VAT returns every month, pays one's PAYE and so forth, then the Government introduces a special section just to get at that person. I have a big issue with all the Government's policies to tax self-employed people. It is not just USC, but a rake of things such as no pension, no health cover and no unemployment benefit after it all fails. I do not understand the reason for it.

With regard to positive discrimination, I would love to tell the Senator that I am equal to a man.

I would be the first to say I am, but I think I am even a little better. The reason I say this is I have three kids and believe I can do something no man can do and that this is quite special. This is not because I chose to be the female, but because I am a female. It was not a choice; I was born this way. I believe this is a gift I have been given. I cannot change my nature. I would love to say: "There is my child. Please breastfeed it." I would love to hand it over and let somebody else do it, but that is not possible in the real world.

I believe I need a little positive discrimination that recognises it is not that I do not have the brain capacity to be a super employee, super entrepreneur or super mother, but that I have made a choice to try to do something a little different and to push my limits out a little further, a by-product of which is that I create employment. I would like to see some positive discrimination because I have taken the effort to take that risk and would like some reward for that. I would like it to be acknowledged that I am not a multinational and that from nothing, I have had a payroll for 70 people for the past eight years. I would like this to be acknowledged in some way. Therefore, I would like some positive discrimination.

At the beginning of this meeting, I was not advocating for that, but now that the question has been asked, I believe all females would like some positive discrimination. That would be very nice.