Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I see the point that the Deputy is making. We decided to address the matter because small businesses told us that they could not hold on to their creative people in research and development because the big companies poached them by offering much stronger rewards. The purpose of the provision is to keep those creative people in the small and medium-sized enterprises.

It is difficult at times to differentiate between small enterprises and large enterprises because state aid is always in the background as a European criteria. We do not want to open the door where somebody can appeal to Europe on the basis of us giving state aid to small enterprises. That would be unfair to larger enterprises and we do not want to get into that space. The way the provision is couched means small businesses will benefit and that is where the application will be. It is not really to allow them to hire many new people, it is to hold on to their inventive people by rewarding them better than heretofore through the tax system. It is a very small cohort of people but they are important to the economy.