Mr. Paul Quinn:

We also have an SME working group which is chaired by the Office of Government Procurement, which enables the Small Firms Association, ISME, IBEC and Chambers Ireland to come together with us, InterTradeIreland, Enterprise Ireland and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to discuss these matters and come up with solutions and ideas on how to support and assist SMEs. The numbers indicate 66% of our expenditure is with SMEs directly and EU statistics indicate - we do not have statistics for Ireland - that an additional 16% flows indirectly to SMEs through subcontracting and supply arrangements. In total probably in excess of 80% of business finds its way to SMEs in the economy. It is very difficult to separate out micro-enterprises and small businesses because we do not have the data in the infrastructure of the State or privately to assist us to separate out this information. At this time we cannot reliably break expenditure information down to micro level because we do not have the data to tell whether many of the businesses are micro, large, medium or small.