Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

My next question is on subhead C8, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. I understand from the Department's briefing note that the commission was established in autumn 2015, a few months ago. Most of us would agree that the two bodies that came together never had the resources they needed so there has been an allegation of cartel behaviour, including monopolistic, duopolistic and oligopolistic behaviour in a few different industries. The two groups that have come together stated they never had the resources to do the job, that perhaps they could do one or two investigations at the same time but they could never really address serious allegations of what is essentially white collar crime. The funding to the new organisation has fallen for the year 2015-16, again by a small amount. Is the 2015 figure basically the combined budget for the two organisations that have come together? The line item in respect of 2016 refers to the new commission. Has additional funding been provided to increase the capacity of the commission because the two organisations that it brings together did not have that capacity?

With regard to regulation, there are key performance indicators, KPIs, for companies using the web portal of the Company Registration Office, CRO. Is there any money in the subhead for developing and building out a web portal to allow companies, the self-employed to do more of their compliance work online? I think I mentioned to both Ministers in the Chamber last week there is a system used in Norway called Altinn, which was implemented in 2001 and which has been hugely successful. Is there any money for building out that platform to allow more and more of the compliance to happen online? Is there funding for creating a one-stop shop for SMEs and the self-employed. The LEOs are there. There has been a discussion about a much more advanced service for the self-employed and the SMEs around the county. Has progress been made and has money been allocated in the Estimates regulatory subhead for a one-stop shop capacity?

The allocation for the regulatory area is about €83 million. We are now half way through the year. Is there anything that is not working within this group? The previous Minister brought a figure of €83 million before the Dáil at the end of last year. We are now half way through the year and I hope as much as possible of it is working, but what is not working, now that we are six months in to the year?