Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It has been ongoing for a long time. The former Minister with responsibility for enterprise, the Minister, Deputy Mary Harney, launched a programme back in 2000 which she said would alleviate the significant burden of administrative requirements on small businesses, yet we still hear of cases where some of the requirements on business are absolutely ludicrous. For example, ISME recently referred to a company which was transporting a wide load from Limerick to Dublin and needed to get separate transport licence from six different local authorities along the route, each local authority charging €250 a time for the separate licence. I refer to examples of local shopkeepers being inspected repeatedly for what appear to be relatively minor matters. We hear constant reports about the endless amount of form-filling and information supply that is required of business, none of which seems to add to better regulation. It is a case of regulation by quantity rather than by quality.

For a decade there has been talk of reducing this burden, yet we still seem to be in a position where all this red tape has to be complied with. Government committees and high level groups are looking at the amount of red tape to be dealt with and will then report on it on an ongoing basis, but no effective measures appear to have been taken to simplify the existing regulatory systems. The issue to be addressed is when we will see not just reports from high-level groups, monitoring groups and individual Departments but commonsense rationalisation and streamlining of the regulatory regime.

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