Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill and all that the Minister is trying to do to help small and medium sized enterprises and create an environment that will help create jobs and promote business in the domestic economy. The Action Plan for Jobs is key to the Minister's strategy. The Cabinet is discussing the iteration of the action plan for 2014. The evidence shows us that the Government is doing good work in this area in trying to make it as easy as possible for new businesses to get going and for existing businesses to survive and thrive. It has been said here before, and has become a mantra, that it is not the Government's responsibility to create jobs but to create an environment in which jobs can be kept and created. It is often repeated, but during the boom years the biggest sector for job growth was construction and after that the public sector. That was the Government directly creating jobs and it should not have done it that way. It was for other reasons, probably political, that it pursued that course but it was not to the benefit of the country, particularly when the economic collapse came.

The strategy being pursued regarding the Action Plan for Jobs is about giving small supports in a tangible way in key areas of the economy that could help private enterprise and individuals succeed, and from that create jobs and a healthier economy. One aspect of that action plan I hope to see promoted is peer-to-peer financing. I have mentioned this in the Dáil a number of times. It is a solid alternative to bank and Government lending and there is great space for it now. In the UK in 2013, 10% of lending to SMEs was peer-to-peer. The borrower gets loans at a cheaper rate while the lender gets a higher interest rate than from saving that money or putting it into less profitable investments. There is great benefit for everybody involved in the market. The other good thing about it is that it does not involve the banks, because that lending model is being challenged, and rightly so, and it does not involve the Government directly. That needs to be promoted and I hope the Action Plan for Jobs for 2014 can promote that in some tangible way through some sort of tax incentive or tax relief or through a small bit of funding that would follow private funding in that market once the different auctions have closed. There is a detailed submission on this in the Minister's office and I hope it will be considered.

We are, rightly, making it easier for businesses, new or existing, to navigate the difficult system when it comes to interacting with local government or with their responsibilities in general. That is one of the welcome aspects of this Bill, that it tries to reduce the red tape for businesses and make people aware of the supports available to them. In this sense a one-stop shop model is a very smart way to proceed. It should be possible for a business-minded person to go to a public desk in a local authority and in one interaction discover all he or she might need to do to set up a business, the files that would need to be completed, the forms that would need to be checked, any charges that might need to be paid and applications made for different types of business. There should also be a facility to point them in the direction of where other types of support might be found, such as mentoring, networking or low-level funding.

I am not sure the local authority is the best place to warehouse those services, and I will come back to that. When we talk about a business person interacting with a local authority or the Government in trying to establish or expand a business it is important that we acknowledge that too many charges and too great a variety of charges fall on a small business today. These charges make it far more complicated to administer and do one's business and are too high. A number of people have come to me who are in the process of trying to open a new business and they have a multiplicity of charges already levied on them. They have liabilities to the local authority before they have even begun to trade. That is a ridiculous situation.

In addition, the way we charge our local businesses through the commercial rates system needs to be completely re-examined and redrawn. We have a flat tax on business, on enterprise. That cannot be seen as a taxation strategy that promotes enterprise. Our taxes on employment are too high. We must acknowledge that that is a disincentive to creating jobs. If we use taxes in other areas of the economy to reduce activity, taxes on employment that are too high will also reduce that activity. The same logic must follow.

We must keep on addressing these two key issues in government. It is good that things like one-stop shops are being introduced. It is good to use the Action Plan for Jobs to put those key supports into particular areas of the economy. However, if basic things like the costs of doing business, in terms of the taxes levied on the business, or the costs of employment are too high, that will be a barrier from the get go.

The Minister's ambition in this Bill is the establishment of local employment offices and that is to be commended. It is a huge amount of work with many moving parts. Many people accessing those services across the country will benefit from the new arrangement. I previously sat on the Dublin City Enterprise Board. I am not sure if the solution for Dublin is to merge the local enterprise board into the local authority. There might be a good case for this in other areas of the country but in talking about our strategy for the country we need to recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach is not necessarily in the best interests of the capital. Dublin is different and should be treated differently.

The Dublin region is the economic engine of the country. We have the highest concentration of people. We raise the most GDP. There is greater diversity in terms of possible avenues for accessing funding. There are more networking events, people and, therefore, more mentors available to people. If it is working well, and it is working well, without the direct control of the local authority, why would we change it? It might be better for other regions of the country, but for Dublin, and the significance that it has for the wider economy, we must be sure we are moving in the right direction. I might be wrong. I defer to the Minister. However, my experience tells me that if one wants to be a successful support to small businesses, it is better to be a small business. If one wants advice on entrepreneurship, it is better to speak to an entrepreneur. That is the kind of mindset we should approach as we try to help people, private enterprise and the economy to get going again and rebuild the domestic economy.

I hope that by moving Dublin City Enterprise Board into Dublin City Council we do not in some way damage that small-business spirit that has led that company in trying to do its best for other small businesses in the city, and which did it very well in my experience and from everything I have seen since. I commend and thank all the members of the company and the board members for the service they have given to date. I wish them well in what they do in the future. I also wish the Minister well in his strategies for promoting job creation and with the Action Plan for Jobs 2014 that will be released shortly.

See this speech in context