Mr. Seamus Maye:

What is stopping us is culture. We have a culture of protecting big business. We have a culture of not standing up to big business. That is what is destroying the potential of our indigenous economy going forward. Most other European countries are way ahead of Ireland in terms of dealing with competition law issues. They hand down heavy fines and prison sentences. America is very good at handing down prison sentences. To all intents and purposes we have zero competition law enforcement in this country. We need it. We should start. We should also bring in rewards for whistleblowers. That is essential. It is very difficult to prove cartels are in place. We need to bring in rewards for whistleblowers, which we have campaigned on for years. We need to bring in an act like the British Enterprise Act 2002. We need to get serious about competition law enforcement. Let me put it this way. We have a man or woman working for €400 a week and they are looking for a 20% increase, to which they feel entitled as everything is expensive. There are two ways we can pay that increase. We can give them another €80 a week or we can increase the purchasing power of their €400, so that they get €480 worth for their €400. We do that by driving hard against costs. I have only touched on certain costs. There are any other costs that are affecting the indigenous economy, such as lack of infrastructure in parts of the country. We will not go into it now. As we depend less and less on foreign direct investment, we have to create the tools to make our indigenous economy thrive. I absolutely believe that this can be a great country. We can do it but we have to get an understanding of what we need to do to get there.