Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I am delighted to speak on this motion and I compliment my colleague, Deputy Leo Varadkar on tabling it. I say to both the Minister and the Civil Service that we need a new way to deal with the problems of the country. Those working in the local authorities, in the county enterprise boards, in the Civil Service, are in safe, secure jobs. They never have to take a chance. People in business who are trying to create employment are over-regulated. We have been talking about this for the past ten years and nobody has done anything about it. We are depending now on small businesses because we will not be getting many more multinational companies to come here. In my county we have Allergan and Baxter; we are delighted to have them and we hope we can hold on to them.

We are going to have to build from the bottom up and that means small businesses. They have been attacked for the past ten years. I know people who got out of business because they were sick and tired of being over-regulated, sick and tired of inspectors calling to their business, sick and tired of employing people to do paperwork for the State, creating employment for the people who never had to take a risk, yet these people were not rewarded, they were not helped and they did not get the support they needed. It is time for new thinking in the Civil Service, new thinking in councils, new thinking in the county enterprise boards. I was in Dunhill in Waterford yesterday where 100 people are employed. They could employ 300 more people if there was less regulation and if they got a small bit of support from the State instead of the State always trying to take away things from them.

People are over-regulated and I want to know what the Government plans to do about it. Fine Gael has proposals to deal with over-regulation because it has to stop. We have to stop these daft EU rules. Ireland goes ten steps further than France and every place else with regard to EU regulations to make sure our people cannot do business in this country. We need small businesses and we need people to take risks.

See this speech in context