Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The survey was commissioned on foot of the comments on the original White Paper. The organised business groups — the representative groups — say they have no problem with regulations or the burdens of the regulatory process as they see them, but they believe they must be of some value or use and that they must be streamlined. They want to try to move away from red tape and have a more satisfactory system. It is not a matter of trying to get out of essential issues.

The business representatives have made some valid points in this regard because many of the regulatory mechanisms date back many years. Their value and usefulness may not be great in many cases. In other cases, compliance is not great where it is very important and it is therefore a matter of determining what is important to the State and trying to get the parties concerned to do this right and remove some of the arguments and difficulties.

The initiative resulted from the original White Paper and the associated discussions and debates. The business regulation survey will assess Irish businesses' attitudes to, and their experience of, regulation. It is intended that the survey, in addition to assessing attitudes to red tape and administrative burdens, will focus on the impact of regulation on business more broadly, including the extent to which it might affect economic growth in general and the competitiveness of business specifically. The intention is that the results of the survey will be used to identify possible sectoral areas for future regulatory reform.

Some groups have practically tried to say there are far too many groups and agencies and they have made all kinds of arguments to the effect that the whole process should be abandoned and started again. I do not agree with this and we must proceed in a careful way. There are areas in which many of our regulatory systems are outdated and it is better that businesses have an input into them. Ultimately, they are the ones fulfilling the criteria and paying for the staff to do so.

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