Ms Geraldine Magnier:

I will quickly respond to some of the items that have come up. We are largely talking today about restaurants and goods, but we also have a huge economy in the associated services. Some 91% of businesses in Ireland are microbusinesses. Many of them are solopreneurs. I nod to and appreciate the social cohesion that Deputy Hayes referred to. I am a proponent of that and the intangible asset that they bring. On the other hand - this is an important point because Deputy Donnelly spoke about housing being an issue - many service businesses are now able to employ from abroad and have people work remotely because there is a housing crisis.

A blunt instrument is used when it comes to measuring rates. Many businesses are not able to receive any bit of rate help or measurement. If they are serviced offices, particularly in urban areas more than in rural areas, there can often be a landlord who has a landlord who has a landlord. It can be hard to measure the cost of what the rates are outside of a business.

Examinership, which has come up here today, is not an easy route. It costs €40,000 to €50,000 to go down the road of examinership. Sometimes a business is going down the swanny because of a lower cost than the examinership one. Ms Harrison illustrated that point earlier. She said that if she could have €60,000, she would save the Exchequer €750,000. Examinership is not an option. Let us look into the figures of examinership. Many of our members have asked us to advise them on it. We have said that the take-up on examinership is low, arduous and administrative and it may not be worth their while.

The minimum wage comes up a lot, particularly when we talk to the hospitality sector. In this country, we have indigenous tech companies that are not suffering through minimum wage attention, but are suffering through maximum wage takers. In services like technology, we are in a country where there is often a lot of brilliant indigenous and FDI companies. However, it is more often the FDI companies that are setting the wage. Indigenous tech people are absorbing that as maximum wage takers.

Another issue that was asked about earlier was investment and angel investors. That is onerous as well. Very often angel investors can come in on business owners too much. It is not a viable option in the operations of a business. When we look further into other types of investment, such as private equity or venture capital, even though Enterprise Ireland is the biggest venture capital investor not just in Ireland but in Europe when it comes to businesses, unfortunately many of our businesses are not falling under the caption of Enterprise Ireland's remit. There are many businesses that I call "stay-up businesses". They are the family businesses. They are not start-up businesses and they are not scale-up businesses, but they are importantly running the social cohesion of this country night and day and subsidising it by not always taking their own minimum wage.

I have to speak anecdotally on the banks because I do not have my figures with me. There are more details on that. We can be non-committal about it, but the banks are showing resistance rather than unwillingness. That resistance is measured over time delays rather than quick decisions where we need fast turnaround. On that, banks are not always friendly towards owners looking for a mortgage, never mind cash flow. We have to look at the risk analysis that is set out for indigenous business or small business differently from others looking for loans.