John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)

The forms for Revenue and company registration are available on-line. I believe the forms about which the Deputy is complaining are those that generally come from the Central Statistics Office, which take some time to complete.

I have met with the Central Statistics Office to see whether those forms can be simplified or if some of Revenue's information could be used in regard to the statistics it is trying to collect. We will work with the Central Statistics Office to try to achieve that objective. That would relieve the burden. It is a question of identifying the problem and working directly with the agency concerned and the business that identified the problem to resolve it. Some of those issues can be resolved. Hopefully, in line with what Revenue collects and what the CSO wants, we can reach a resolution. There will always be a number of different forms because the CSO is collecting different information. Those forms need to be simplified. Sometimes in terms of the EU requirement and our own legislation, it is how the legislation is interpreted in the context of those forms. They can be simplified. They just need to be put in layman's language. We need to understand the requirements of small businesses.

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