Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have one question and one observation. I will make the observation first with the indulgence of the Chair. We are seven months into this Dáil and we have yet to sit down with the Minister and have time on both sides to explore anything. The observation relates to the vulture funds. I would like to formally raise it with the Minister. There are many legitimate Irish companies trading, registered and paying taxes in Ireland who would like to be able to bid for NAMA portfolios or other portfolios. They are bidding against foreign companies who are acting legally in this country but who are paying no tax due to the tax laws here. I wanted to raise the issue with the Minister because it is a very serious competition issue and it would appear to give very unfair advantage to foreign vulture funds over Irish banks and pension funds. The Minister does not need to comment on it. I just wanted to formally raise it with her. I think it is very relevant to her brief and we have not had a chance in this committee to talk about anything other than expenditure so far.

There seems to be a great opportunity to streamline compliance and regulation for business, particularly SMEs. It is not my figure but I was told the other day by an individual that they needed 17 separate permits from the State between local government, health and safety and God only knows what else to set up a restaurant.

Would the Minister be amenable to allocating a material amount, probably through one of these regulatory bodies or perhaps through a programme within the Department, to go through all the compliance for SMEs, be they restaurants, care homes or manufacturing outlets, and examine their entire regulatory and compliance budget to streamline it and make it easier and quicker? I do not say there should be less regulation. Will the Minister allocate funding to systematically examine this? This is not about examining one programme here and another there but to task a team to go through the process of every aspect of compliance and interaction with a view to dramatically reducing it.