Mr. John A. Moran:

Deputy Boyd Barrett raised so many issues that it is difficult to respond. We are here to try to speak on behalf of small businesses. Much of the reaction that has taken place during the crisis to their troubles has been interfered with - if I can use that expression - by conversations about big business. The Deputy mentioned offshore firms and large salaries. I cannot speak for Ms McCabe in terms of her individual salary but I doubt she is the type of person Deputy Boyd Barrett is thinking about.

It is important that political representatives treat the sectors fairly right across the system. They should not try to take away measures that need to be implemented for those who are suffering badly because of a prejudice or view they have about someone else or a story from the United States or somewhere else where other things happen. I urge Deputy Boyd Barrett to park those biases as he thinks through all the measures we are talking about in terms of how we want to do it.

Our schemes are designed in a particular way. It is a little more painful to do it the way we are doing it. It involves a calculation by the individual firms of the compensation they need to get for the losses they have suffered. It is not about throwing large amounts of money at large numbers of firms. It is a fine analysis to be done by Revenue. We know Revenue is never generous when it comes to giving away anything. If members are concerned about tax games or whatever, no entity is better placed than Revenue to know what firms are playing those games. I do not believe most SME owners in the country are playing games with their taxes. They are trying to survive, as they have done for many years. They are trying to employ people and to eke out a salary from the business. That is very much the position.

If members need to do so, they should travel to other parts of the country. They should go to rural towns and other parts of the country that will not have the same recovery as Dublin will have. As we saw last time around, the presence of big companies in Dublin meant the others could feed off that recovery.

The wage subsidy issue Deputy Boyd Barrett raised is really important. I have already said it would be a nice idea to keep it going for a little longer, because ultimately it helps the businesses to actually keep people employed. There is, however, a philosophical debate on this at all times. I would prefer to have someone employed and earning money, in particular in the private sector, than being supported by the State either on a wage subsidy or by unemployment support. We can go back to the paper Dr. Stephen Kinsella delivered to the committee to see why that should be the case. Investment by the Government in capital spending means we get back two or three times the money we put in. If we simply provide it in income support, we may only just about get the same amount of money back because it gets spent in the economy.