Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We want to reduce the burden on small businesses and on low and middle income workers who, by the way, depend on each other. Who does the Minister think spends money in the small and medium-sized businesses on the high street?

It is the corporations and the very wealthy, who can hoard their money offshore and avoid their taxes while making enormous profits, who should be made pay a bigger share in order to give relief to the ordinary consumers on the high street and the small and medium enterprises which are being crushed by the recession and by the rates and parking charges which they cannot sustain and which are crippling many small towns.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is willing to look at this matter. A motion calling for differential rates, proposed by People Before Profit, was passed by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council with the support of the Minister's party colleagues. The Minister should look at international models we could follow to give a break to small and medium enterprises.

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