Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

With regard to the administrative burden faced by small businesses, many people who run small businesses spend their weekends at their dining room tables filling in the various survey forms that are sent out by Government offices. Not only is this a significant cost, but for many people who are new to the experience of running their own business it is an emotional and stressful burden. The Government has been talking about reducing this for some time and has spoken about putting as many as possible of the forms on-line and allowing them to be filled in on-line. The Taoiseach must be aware, from people in his constituency and the business people he knows, that our level of regulation is very old fashioned in that it still involves a great deal of form filling. We accept it is for the collection of statistical data, but small businesses are receiving a tsunami of paper. Does the Minister propose to lift that burden?

While the Taoiseach is lightening the burden of regulation for small business, what does he propose to do about the banks? During the debate on the Finance Act this year, the Taoiseach, who was then Minister for Finance, said he favoured regulation with a light hand. He spoke philosophically about it for some time. Now that regulation with a light hand has brought the international economy almost to its knees, particularly in the United States, does he intend to revisit his approach to regulation of large institutions such as banks? In particular, does he propose to examine how the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator have been able to respond to the current crisis brought about by delinquent capitalism in the United States banks and, indeed, in some European banks?

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