Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It has been a pleasure to listen to the delegations. I have travelled around the country a lot over the past couple of years, visiting shops and other small traders. I have mainly met members of ISME, the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association. They are in a very competitive market. Of the shops that I visited, several have gone out of business. Other shops are concerned whether they will stay alive while others have succeeded very well. In general terms, those who succeeded very well are not now paying the minimum wage. They did start by taking somebody on the minimum wage. However, if they were going to hold onto that successful employee, they had to pay them more, otherwise they would lose them to somebody else. This belief in a competitive market is successful. It works very well and means people are automatically lifted up if their business succeeds. If the business does not succeed, they go out of business.

Many people cannot figure out how Members in Leinster House can say we should do this when they have never created a job or never actually borrowed money to start a business. They get frustrated and feel we should be discussing upward-only rent clauses, for example. We need to help businesses, survive, thrive and succeed.

This would help to ensure that those who are brave enough to borrow the money to start a business and employ somebody, even at a low rate, will know they will have to pay staff more if they are to keep them. If they do not pay them more, if they do not keep them, and if they do not succeed, they will go out of business and everybody loses. Our task is to ensure that businesses are given an open playing field to succeed and to leave it up to those who are going to work very hard to succeed. The objective of every business is to survive the coming year. A significant number of companies believe they are not going to survive unless they get a free hand.