Ms Tara Buckley:

I thank the Chairman and members for this opportunity. We are delighted to appear before the joint committee to talk to members about policy options to support business growth and job retention and creation in Irish towns and villages. As the Chairman noted, I am accompanied by Mr. Colin Fee, an entrepreneur from County Louth with shops and businesses in Dundalk and Drogheda, Mr. Hugh Doyle of the Donnybrook Fair group, a second-generation retailer with shops and businesses in Dublin and Wicklow and Mr. Eamonn Gavin, who is a town centre supermarket owner in Ballinagh, County Cavan. They are representative of the owners of the 4,000 local shops, convenience stores, forecourt stores and supermarkets that RGDATA represents.

A few years ago, the economist Mr. Jim Power carried out research for RGDATA and found that the independent retail grocery sector in Ireland supported 90,000 jobs and made a total contribution of €3.6 billion to the Irish economy. The study highlighted that the shops RGDATA represents are major employers and contributors in local economies and have a strong family ownership structure with second, third, fourth and fifth-generation involvement. They are major supporters of local and Irish suppliers, make a major contribution to their local communities and local authorities and provide many people with their first job. Importantly, Mr. Power pointed out that spending €100 in a locally-owned shop is worth three times more to the local community than spending it in a global chain. RGDATA members are the town and village retailers and are happy to assist the joint committee's examination of policy options to drive job creation and retention.

Before we touch on those options, I would like to state that entrepreneurial independent retailers are doing it for themselves. RGDATA members are creating and sustaining jobs and businesses, constantly innovating and adapting, proactively dealing with competition from the biggest retailers in the world, actively engaging in their local community, seeking out local Irish producers and products to bring to their customers and constantly reinvesting in their business and their people. These are key characteristics of the Irish independent retail sector and this is why we still have a third share of the Irish grocery market, in a marked contrast to our UK and EU neighbours where independent shops are losing out to multiple chains.

Consequently, while independent shopkeepers are getting on with what they do best, namely, creating and sustaining jobs and constantly innovating to ensure their businesses survive and thrive, what can members as policy makers do to assist them? RGDATA believes that what the policy makers need to focus on is delivering on the promise to make Ireland the best country in the world for small business. To paraphrase a slogan all members will have heard, some things have been done but there is a lot more to do. What policy makers need to do is to allow the conditions to exist for businesses to do what they do best, which is to get on with generating businesses and creating employment. We are not looking for a hand-up or a handout but instead for the State to stop adding unnecessary red tape and to focus on removing unnecessary impediments to doing business.

What can policy makers do to assist with job creation in towns and villages? I will provide some suggestions from RGDATA. They should reinstate the 4.25% employers’ PRSI rate. They should ensure no increases in business costs as a result of new legislation or regulations. They should monitor constantly bank charges, as well as access to and the cost of credit. In addition, they should monitor the cost of implementing changes in payments on foot of the Government’s drive for fewer cash transactions and more electronic payments.

We also need to establish a national parking policy guideline, get upward-only rents legislation through the Dáil, drive cost cutting and efficiencies at local government level, ensure value for money from commercial rates and a fair sharing of burden between town centres and out-of-town retailers and support clued-in retail developments with sustainable retail planning policies while introducing specific incentives for town centre regeneration.

With regard to business costs, we have been long promised a 25% reduction in business regulation costs. If members ask any independent retailers, unfortunately they have not seen evidence of this; all we hear about is new, additional charges or red tape. For example, the Minister for Health wants to raise €5 million by imposing a new annual tobacco licence, costing between €500 and €1,000 per retailer, although retailers are already registered and regulated by the Office for Tobacco Control and pay a €50 fee. This action alone will close struggling newsagents and smaller shops, costing hundreds of jobs in towns and villages. We ask members to ensure the transfer of the national lottery licence will not lead to new charges from banks just to change the name on long-established agreements to provide bonds for national lottery retail agents. We thank policymakers for ensuring that retail agents' margins are ring-fenced but this could be another way of taking some of that margin away from retailers.

RGDATA retailers are very conscious of the responsible sale of alcohol and we want to support the responsible retailing of alcohol. We note the voluntary code will become statutory and we ask members to ensure this will not add to the costs for independent retailers. We welcome the competition and consumer protection legislation currently going through the legislative process; it will introduce new compliance and training costs for grocery goods undertakings with a turnover in excess of €50 million. We see some groups calling for this threshold to be reduced to €10 million but that would be totally unnecessary and significantly add to the costs for smaller retail businesses. These are just some of the issues that policymakers can influence. They will impose new costs and more red tape but will not deliver any significant benefits and will have an impact on jobs in smaller shops in towns and villages.

Policymakers may be delighted that banks are getting back to profitability but local Irish business owners are paying for this with new bank charges and increased security costs. For example, the cost of lodging cash has increased from less than 20 cent per €100 to almost 50 cent per €100. That increase has added approximately €20,000 to bank charges for one of our members who runs a forecourt business. I recently saw a refreshing presentation from the chief executive of the office of better regulation in the UK and, in that jurisdiction, they have to remove two existing licences or regulations before they can introduce a new one. Additionally, they run a scheme called "Trading Places", where business regulation inspectors spend a few days working in the business they will be inspecting so they get a good understanding of what it is like to be on the other side of the counter.

Where towns are well managed, RGDATA gets few complaints about commercial rates but we get many complaints where the streets are dirty, the town centre is uninviting and parking regimes or charges are driving customers away from the town. We also get significant complaints when the area has been revalued and the rates for a shop increased by 70% or 150%, as has happened to RGDATA members. We urge policymakers to ensure the costs for any small or medium-sized businesses do not increase by such amounts in any one year.

The committee has already heard much about making town centres clean, attractive, safe places that are inviting to visit and in which to do business. Some towns are doing a great job and in many of these RGDATA members are involved in or spearheading town trader groups. The group provides assistance in helping these but we need more involvement from local authorities and specific funds ring-fenced for investment in town centre regeneration, with specific incentives to regenerate town centre sites and derelict buildings and shops, as well as heritage buildings and sites. There should be a focus on revitalising derelict town centre sites and vacant shops before any further edge of town or out of town development is approved. We need value for money for our rates spend and there also needs to be joined-up thinking in the administration of town centre parking regimes, which are driving people, literally, to out of town centres with free parking. This needs to be addressed. RGDATA supports the effective management of car parking – we understand that this is necessary – but if there is a charge for parking in the town centre then there should be a similar charge for parking in the out of town shops. Car parks in out of town centres should be subject to rates.

RGDATA has never opposed the national minimum wage and we actively assist our members to comply with all of the various employment regulations and legislation. Why do policymakers continue to single out only the retail grocery and convenience sector for a joint labour committee, JLC, wage-setting structure? This effectively will mean that just because we sell certain items like confectionary and pressed ham, we end up with a statutory system that imposes higher starting wages than the rest of the retail sector. Retail has changed and fashion stores now sell sweets and confectionary, department stores sell newspapers and magazines, cakes and biscuits, off-licences sell pizza and ice cream, and booksellers sell groceries. The barriers are blurred and we should all be treated the same.

If we want retailers to create and retain jobs in rural towns and villages, we must reinstate the 4.25% employers' PRSI for people earning less than €356 a week. That one change since 1 January this year has added €20,000 to €80,000 to RGDATA members' wage bills, which equates to many jobs in the retail sector. Some 2,200 further retail jobs have been lost in the most recent CSO statistics, and if this lower rate of employers' PRSI is reinstated, we will create new jobs.

I will now ask my colleagues to outline how they are getting on with creating and retaining jobs in towns and villages, and what they think needs to be done to assist them.