Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On small and medium enterprises and corporation tax, the witnesses mentioned the bumper receipts we have had in recent years. I will come back to that in a minute. Sometimes when we talk about our economy we tend to focus on the FDI. Indeed, when we deal with finance Bills there are changes which support FDI. FDI is hugely important as are the tax receipts and how we use them, as Mr. O'Brien mentioned. If we stripped that away though and looked at the economy and how businesses are operating excluding FDI, the picture is not as rosy. It is actually quite concerning and this budget needs to get to grips with all of this because there is volatility. We can talk about what we do with corporation tax receipts but we need to look at profitability in respect of SMEs. IBEC has a number of proposals. I am not sure if they are the right proposals or if they are enough but we need an action plan for small businesses. That was said at the national economic forum. FDI performance is masking what is a problem. Does IBEC see that as a concern and a future risk? Why are our small and medium enterprises underperforming compared to their peers and why are they less profitable in this State than they should be?