Ms Maeve McElwee:

I am happy to pick that up because Senator Garvey is right. We would very much see it as our job as representatives of businesses here in Ireland, and Irish based businesses, to support all businesses. The Small Firms Association is an association within the IBEC house. While typically known as having a membership of larger businesses, the broad base of our membership is made up of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Those regional enterprises are extraordinarily important to the vibrancy of our economy.

The key reason we have written to the Taoiseach this week is to talk about the challenges those businesses are facing. We have been as clear as we can possibly be. Employers are not opposed to the legislation that is being introduced. They all have merit. They all place real importance on having a vibrant, well regulated labour market. However, the timing and the lack of co-ordination around them has been most problematic. That is why we are calling for a pause - not a rollback or a removal - so that we can look and see what those costs are. We asked the Government to produce its regulatory impact assessment of the overarching cost of all of these scattergun pieces of legislation that have come at us at the same time, and what the impact is on business and the Government's assessment of that. We are calling for the Government to publish that report which we know it has been undertaking. That will be critical.