Michael Ahern (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

I was involved in the reduction of administrative burden in the last Government when I was Minister of State responsible for company law. Deputies have mentioned regulatory burden and we brought in audit exemption, which has been of great benefit to companies and accountants.

There are other areas in which changes have been made, leading to much angst being eliminated. These include redundancy payments as the process by which companies reclaim payments made to redundant workers have been streamlined. Claims can now be made on-line and there are savings of approximately €1.2 million for firms through this change.

There is also the area of tax clearance certificates. Instead of having to submit an original certificate in hard copy, the certificate can now be checked on-line by the Government agency awarding the contract. That is another simple change which has been beneficial to companies.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has introduced new regulations whereby waste collection firms can apply to one local authority for a permit which will apply in other local authority areas. These are areas in which progress has been made.

An ESRI survey was carried out in 2006 and 2007 of 800 firms on their attitudes to regulation and 55% of those surveyed believed the overall amount of regulation in their sector was about right.

With regard to issues affecting international competitiveness, businesses ranked regulatory burdens at 14%, labour costs at 30% and infrastructural deficits at 13%. We are ranked in the World Bank's Doing Business 2008 report at number eight from 178 in terms of ease of starting and running a business. Aside from that, I hope the Minister will provide the target in the not too distant future.

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