Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

The position is quite clear. For almost a decade the Government has been sailing along, buoyed by the economic boom and thereby lulled into a false sense of security, smugness and complacency. The Government has been given a free ride for almost a decade but it is now faced with significant economic turbulence. The Government always claimed credit for everything that happened, with Ministers appearing on the news every evening. Every news programme in the country was bombarded by them. However, we have had 130 job losses at Grove Turkeys in Monaghan, 60 at Merriot Radiators in Clonmel, 360 at Allergan in Arklow, 220 at Jacobs-Fruitfield in Tallaght, 60 at Britvic in Cork, and 400 at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, while 1,500 jobs are under threat at SR Technics in Dublin. The litany of job losses goes on. Is the Minister of State concerned that in January numbers on the live register increased for the fourth consecutive month? One would have to go back to 1999 in order to find worse figures for January. Was the Minister of State prepared for this? Did he put all his eggs in the one basket, hoping the construction industry would carry employment forward? Did he not anticipate that difficulties might well arise and were there no warning signs? Many small business people, who are the risk-takers in this economy, are smothered and choked by the level of bureaucracy the Government has imposed upon them. The Government is strangling the life out of small businesses but what will the Minister of State do about it?

Yesterday, the owner of a business with ten employees appeared before the Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. He complained that he had to fill in 54 different forms. That sort of red tape is strangling small businesses that are the lifeblood of this economy generating jobs across the economic spectrum. What will the Government do to help those industries? The provision of foreign direct investment in parallel with support for small industries, which are important in every community, is needed. What will the Minister of State do to ensure the obstacles and impediments to growth in those industries are removed so that they can expand and be competitive in this environment? Is the imposition of a significant number of indirect stealth taxes on industry by the Government not one of its greatest problems? Is it not responsible for the significant cost base of businesses, which is leading to a lack of competitiveness? We are suffering the consequences of the Government's actions in imposing stealth taxes on companies and small business.

See this speech in context