Ms Mary Rose Burke:

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to address the committee. IBEC represents businesses large and small, indigenous and multinational, right across the country. IBEC recently launched a major campaign called "An Ireland that works", which sets out business priorities for the next stage of our recovery. Those priorities have five key elements, which are based around reducing the tax burden, investing in the future, better Government and better regulation, extending Ireland's global reach and supporting enterprise and entrepreneurship. Two of those elements form the main thrust of our budget submission, which is around taxing less and investing more.

The latest growth figures from the economy show that a net adjustment of €200 million will be sufficient on budget day to deliver the deficit targets. This is significantly less than the mooted €2 billion and will bring us comfortably under the 3% limit. We have an opportunity to put some momentum behind the recovery we see in the economy. Now is the time to draw under the period of painful austerity we have seen. That was very necessary but the economy has now entered into a new phase. We need to give consumers a break, put spending power into their pockets and kickstart a period of private commercial and public investment. If we get this right, there is a potential to enjoy strong growth over the coming months and years and it will also deliver thousands of jobs across the country.

The budget must focus on reducing tax rates and stimulating investment in the economy. I will look first at cutting income and consumer taxes. With the economy doing well, there is an opportunity to give people back more of the money they earn. Consumers deserve a break and putting more money back in people's pockets will stimulate the domestic economy and further job creation. We have specific asks of the Government in respect of budget 2015. Specifically, we would like it to increase the entry point into the higher marginal rate from €32,800 to €34,800; to reduce the marginal tax rate from a fully loaded 52% to 51%; and to address the anomalies in the universal social charge that mean that self-employed people are not treated in the same way as PAYE workers. We are also asking that recent increases in excise on alcohol be reversed and would argue that the 9% VAT hospitality rate should be maintained. We have seen that this has been very beneficial. We would also request that the very unfair pensions levy be dropped, as was initially promised.

Along with that, we need to be cognisant of the tax environment for business. We need to encourage investment by business and investment in infrastructure. The capital gains tax regime needs to be completely overhauled to encourage companies to re-invest money in new projects and create new jobs. The employment investment incentive scheme needs to be entirely re-branded and reformed to encourage people to know what it means about stimulating investment in Irish SMEs and Irish jobs.

We also need a period that involves taking advantage of the low interest rates that are available and a programme of public private partnerships to deliver on some key infrastructure projects. We also need to be cognisant of our international tax offering. We have become increasingly less attractive to mobile investment in recent years. This is due to rising personal income taxes but is also due to some of the competitive offerings in other countries.

This applies particularly to the UK, where the tax code has been realigned to attract foreign direct investment. We must remain committed to the 12.5% rate of tax but we must examine other areas, particularly the tax regime relating to intellectual property. We must bring greater certainty to the matter of tax credits for research and development.