Mr. Colin Fee:

Our main business is in Dundalk and we have convenience and forecourt stores. We have recently acquired a public house for our sins. Our business has been in the family since 1958, and my brother, Eugene, and I took it over in 1991. We currently have 65 staff employed, and that number is down approximately 20% in the past five years because of cost cutting. We have a number of projects in the pipeline.

In all my years working since we went into business on our own in 1991, I have found the past two or three years to be the most challenging and difficult. I have three of the main examples of what we experienced over the past couple of years, and the first concerns planning levies. We built two shop units adjacent to one of our sites and the parking levies as part of the planning levies amounted to €80,000 because of the number of shops. We paid the money but no extra parking was provided for it. The money accounted for approximately 25% of the total project costs, which involved changes to a post office, alterations shop and a pharmacy. There are between 12 and 16 people employed in these new businesses, which did not relocate from elsewhere. It will take three to five years of rent just to pay for the parking levies. There are three other businesses in town which were going to do similar ventures to create employment but the parking levies in particular stopped them going ahead.

The Chairman mentioned another big issue concerning the black economy and something must be done about it. I will not get into the specifics but everybody knows what these people are at. They are not regulated or obeying rules, and they do not pay all the duties they should. There have been a couple of incidents when people have opened a business and undercut us, particularly on the fuel side, as Dundalk is a hive of fuel laundering sites which seem to be completely above the law. These businesses operate but not everything on the staff side goes through the books or is declared. Many regulations are not been heeded, and nothing seems to be done. We are four cent or five cent per litre adrift.

They are selling fuel below the price our supplier pays for it. That is an area that needs to be examined.

We also find it hard to attract staff even though we pay over the minimum wage. This is mainly because social welfare entitlements are too lucrative. Recently, when we had to cut costs, instead of letting two staff members go, we decided to reduce their hours. Two months later, one of the staff members said he had got a job over in the UK and was heading there. When I informed the other staff member of the good news that he was back on a five-day week, he told me it would cost him money to do so because of the value of the social welfare benefits he was getting for working a three-day week. We subsequently had to hire another person on a three-day week. When we are interviewing for staff, we are invariably asked by applicants if they will be paid through the books. When we inform them, “Yes”, they are disappointed. We are trying to compete in that field with retailers who are not paying through the books. This whole area of regulation has to be tightened up.

As Ms Buckley stated, there are a significant number of regulations in our business from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the environmental health officers and the Dangerous Substances Act with which we have to comply. We have issues with unregulated car washes. The Irish Petrol Retailers Association, IPRA, reckons there are over 3,000 unlicensed car washes currently operating. They wash them cheaper than we can as it is not viable for us to do it at their prices. Our car wash business has been practically eradicated. These unlicensed operators, for example, do not have effluent licences or do not pay water charges and simply get away with it. In my area, two food outlets opened recently. I know from standing in them that they are not fully compliant with EHO regulations. They also undercut us and seem to get away with it as well. The regulated businesses seem to be the easy touch for many of the regulatory bodies.

I hear these reports in the media that banks are turning around credit and loan applications in so many weeks. Our experience is that this is total rubbish. Currently, we have an application in for the restructuring of existing credit facilities. It has been with the bank for 15 months which keeps coming back for more information which resets the clock every time. I have two other applications in, one for a new venture for a public house beside us which went up for sale and which we bought for strategic reasons. We bought the pub for almost €600,000 through a bridging loan from one of our stakeholders. We made applications through the Bank of Ireland in July 2013 and AIB in November 2013. We still have not got a letter of sanction from either bank. I went way up the line three weeks ago and it is moving now. The main part of this public house will be a restaurant. We will hire between 12 and 18 staff, including chefs, waitresses and counter staff, to run this part of the business. However, we cannot hire them until we get the bank finance. That is an indication of how the banks are stymying access to credit. The same is happening with another building we bought with a restaurant and two coffee shops looking to rent it. Again, I cannot close the sale until the bank comes back to me. The banks seem to be grossly understaffed, having got rid of their experienced staff. This is the toughest I have ever experienced.