Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One point that has been made is that for a small or micro-company involved in research and development and claiming this credit, there is a clawback scenario that can occur. If that company, which is not trying to scam the system, falls foul of the technical rules, that clawback could have a serious impact on it. The suggestion is that many of them just stay away from it because the risk is too great. If the company thought that it was availing of this and then found that it was not entitled to it after spending money on what it believed was eligible research and development activity, it would have a detrimental impact on the company, given the size and nature of the small and micro-companies that we are talking about. Is that something that has concerned the Minister or been raised? I ask him to keep this under consideration. We are moving in the right direction but we need to go a bit further because, as the Minister acknowledged, we are way behind the curve in some areas. I made the point before that while every bit of foreign direct investment is welcome, if we stripped that away from the Irish economy, the picture behind that does not look too pretty. Some of it is excellent but some is not pretty when measured against our competitors.