Mr. Ian Talbot:

I am no expert on research and development. Perhaps Mr. Quigley will elaborate on that. The Minister for Finance has choices to make in the context of social welfare. During these proceedings, we have prioritised Chambers Ireland's perspective on the need to invest in infrastructure. We wrote our submission several weeks ago. As matters in the UK have continued to evolve, we have become increasingly aware of the need for a Brexit-focused budget and to retain HAP investment as a core principle. We have not formed any views on whether social welfare payments should be increased.

We just focus on what business is looking for in order to maintain a strong business environment and ensure that businesses employ people, generate revenue and pay taxes, VAT, PAYE, PRSI, etc.

Across our network, we have significant and consistent asks in respect of investment in public transport. We have consistently gone out and done things such as the DART underground and metro north, which has evolved into the metro project.

On the need to service particular areas, I will stray into Dublin's expertise because we can learn from its experience in developing other cities. I refer, for example, to BusConnects and how that will evolve. Much of this comes back to the need to continue to secure investment in order to continue to invest money in these projects, which Chambers Ireland will continue to support.

We need to ensure that the planning system is capable of ensuring we can deliver these programmes in good time and at a reasonable expense. The committee will be familiar with the DART infrastructure. Iarnród Éireann still has plans, including that which would involve moving the northern line to the docklands. We need to go ahead with these things and explain to people what they will mean. People might be slightly discommoded in the context of making the journeys they are used to, but we need to explain that because we are going to live in a sustainable fashion into the future, we need to detach ourselves from cars and have the right public transport infrastructure in place. It is for this that Chambers Ireland has consistently called.

We have some recommendations on vacant shop units. We are equally concerned about them. It is not just in Dún Laoghaire, where there is a prominent shop-----