Ms Rebecca Harrison:

Thank you very much. I was putting myself off mute. It is fantastic to hear the contributions from everyone on both sides of the table, if you like, as it is to hear the support from the Government and Opposition. It is clear that this is a real issue and an understandable one.

My experience is very similar to those who have spoken with Mr. Collender, Mr. Broderick and Ms O'Meara. I run two businesses in County Wicklow. One is a fashion and lifestyle retailer and we also have a café. I will not reiterate what those people said. I will make two comments on the Revenue interaction and competitiveness, to give a little understanding from our side. This committee is about competitiveness. As small businesses, small retailers and small hospitality businesses, in particular, we are competing against big international players. That playing field by its nature is going to be one-sided and very steeply sloped. On top of that, when initiatives and impacts that have been applied to our way of doing business are added to it, such as the minimum wage increases and all of the things we have said already, the impact is felt much greater by small businesses. The introduction of the small business test has been a fantastic initiative by the Government, but it needs to be more widely applied and it needs to be at the back of everyone's mind, all of the time, to literally do it.

I will come back to the impact of those increased costs and put numbers on it a little. Mr. Cummins from the Restaurants Association mentioned those figures and the cost to the State and to Revenue of businesses closing. Not to put too fine a point on it, we are now at a position where businesses are going to close because of what has happened so far, never mind what is yet to come in terms of the new environment. The environment for operating a small business in Ireland at the moment means the numbers do not add up. As Senator McCarthy said, the turnover for our café and shop has stayed consistent but our profit has completely eroded. In fact, our café has been operating at a loss for the past two years.

We are now at a point where if I do not do something, which is either close the café or make more redundancies, I will continue to operate at a loss, and I cannot do that.

I will talk about the impact and share the numbers if our business were to close with the loss of 25 jobs. Mr. Cummins mentioned this in the greater scheme but ours is a little example. This is the retail side of the business but the numbers are similar to the café. The cost of redundancy would be €120,000. I will not be in a position to pay that. Revenue will have to pay that under the redundancy scheme. Some €245,000 will be spent on jobseeker’s payment for my 20 staff in one year. Some of my staff are older and will find it much more difficult to get another job. The cost will also include a €258,000 loss in income from VAT, a €25,000 loss on income tax from the employees, as well as €5,000 in USC, €30,000 in PRSI and €23,000 in corporation tax, which is the figure we had for last year. That is a total cost to the State of €700,000 for my one business closing, for the sake of probably €60,000 in increased costs. I do not have €60,000 sitting here because, over the past five years, I have cut every ounce of excess fat in my business. We have done everything we can. In fact, a year and a half ago we had to make some redundancies, which were horrendous to make. We only have a certain size pot from which to pay our team, so we have to pay fewer people more money rather than paying everyone. Our business is a little bit worse because we have fewer people involved in it and making it better.