Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I look forward to the debate over the next two nights on the role and future of SMEs. It is good that we can bring small business to the fore of parliamentary business. While we have an excellent committee, previously chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy English, and currently chaired by Deputy Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, which addresses many of these issues, that work, because it takes places downstairs in the committee rooms, goes unnoticed. The role of SMEs deserves more than that.

As a country, we place great value on and attention to foreign direct investment. We have a fantastic track record in this regard and are world beaters in terms of the work which the IDA does in attracting foreign direct investment to this country, for which it is to be commended. We need to pay the same attention and make the same fuss of the 350,000 people in this country who are employed in and operate SMEs. We need to pay the same attention and make the same fuss of the men and women of this country who on a Monday morning may not know from where they will get the money to pay the salaries of their employees at the end of the week, never mind themselves. We need to pay the same attention and make the same fuss of self-employed businesspeople who make up a large cohort of the percentage of people in this country who are on low incomes. This is the want and the lot of many SME owners. They are left on their own without support, back-up or guidance. There is a fractured system of support across the country which is, at least in some places, excellent and in others dreadful. The lack of consistency in this regard is choking many businesses and not providing them with opportunities.

Tonight, we are laying down some specific proposals in regard to securing a future for SMEs. There are many other issues we could mention in this motion but we have decided to focus on taxation and PRSI changes and access to finance. Many colleagues will discuss other issues around that. Many of us in this House will have had the experience in the last number of years of being approached by people who during the so-called boom times employed large numbers of people, but when their business went under as a direct result of the collapse in the economy were abandoned by the system while the people they had employed were given every support possible, including retraining, social protection assistance and so on. They were abandoned by a system that put a value on assets that were no longer of value, that could not understand, appreciate or be flexible enough to deal with business failure and could not understand or appreciate the personal impact this had on the individual or the desire of many of those individuals to restart their businesses. This is not a political charge; it is a system charge. We have a system that does not know what it means to understand the urgency of small business or the urgency of decision-making around small business. It is a system that thrives on regulation and paper, leaving small businesses choked by paper and rules, and not for the want of going to a lower base or lower common denominator but because we love gold plated regulation in this country.

We need to set ourselves a firm ambition. I am very critical of the Government amendment which contains broad objectives that anybody would sign up to. They are of the Andrex puppy type in that they are nice and fluffy and everybody loves them but there is nothing specific to actually measure them against. The Fianna Fáil motion is quite specific and focused. The Taoiseach's statement that he wants Ireland to be the best small country in the world in which to do business by 2016 is also vague. We want Ireland to be the best country in which to be a small business. We want specifically to put small business at the forefront of enterprise policy. The proposals we make tonight are not, as suggested earlier by the troops in the Fine Gael press office, a reaction to demand for policy. They have been in the pipeline for some time, including as set out previously by Deputy Michael McGrath's proposals around the disparity in tax treatment, including capital gains tax, included in budget submissions in October 2013 and 2014. Deputy O'Dea will speak about his PRSI benefits policy, which has been in existence since 2012.

The Minister of State will be aware that at the time of the launch of the credit guarantee scheme I articulated the Fianna Fáil view that it was too expensive and would not work. We were proven correct. We were promised that there would be a review and that legislation to amend the credit guarantee scheme would be introduced in the Autumn session last year. We were then told it would be introduced this Spring session. We are now in the Summer session and there is still no sign of the credit guarantee review legislation. All the time, that specific legislation is needed. It is needed, as stated last week during a Topical Issue debate, by businesses whose loans are being sold from under them by, in particular, Ulster Bank. These businesses need the protection of the credit guarantee scheme to refinance their loans. The legislation is required urgently. People's livelihoods are being sold from under them while the system tries to redesign a system that is broken. Despite that people's livelihoods are on the line two and a half years later we are still talking about a scheme which everybody knew from the start was flawed and would not meet its ambition.

I acknowledge the changes made to the microfinance scheme and the turnaround that has occurred in that regard over the past year. Those involved have brought a sense of vibrancy and urgency to the situation but the whole area of credit finance remains unresolved. We are still not giving SMEs the kind of finance they deserve. The banks continue to publish statistics that indicate they are refinancing. Despite that they are being given more money through the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland for so-called new business, they continue to call in loans and to refinance them and then declare this as new lending. They are continuing to put extra charges on people and small businesses and to tell small business on what day they can do their business. There are banks in this country that are dictating on what day businesses can lodge coin, leaving many businesses having to retain cash on their premises, which is not good. There are banks which are pulling away wholesale from rural areas, thereby forcing businesses in those areas to travel long distances to lodge cash. That is not something we want to see but it is what is happening. This is the reality for small business in terms of banking, which is not good enough.

Earlier, we spoke about variable interest rates for mortgage holders. Variable interest rates in regard to business lending are off the scale. There is no sense of competition in the market. Two years ago, the decision was made to establish a strategic banking corporation that would focus on small business, in the same way as the ICC and ACC did in the good old days. The Government opted instead to use the money that became available to it to invest in the existing pillar banks, leading to no competition or hunger between them for business and no sense of new products or new service to a business community that is crying out for that type of service and is required to give that type of service to its customers. We long-finger the banking problems as well.

The Government amendment praises the local enterprise offices, some of which I acknowledge are working very well, including the economic investment unit in Mayo. I acknowledge the fantastic work done by that unit in delivering the transatlantic cable project, which will be hugely important not alone for Mayo but for the entire country.

However, the LEOs are the county enterprise boards, CEBs, re-branded. In terms of service, there has not been a significant change from what was provided by the county enterprise boards, which served people fairly well. With regard to training, the majority of the CEBs served us well. What the LEOs need is new fire power. They need the ability to give small loans, more than what is being given at present. The LEOs need to expand their role in the context of a 21st-century economy as opposed to a 19th-century economy, as this is the thinking behind much of the legislation underpinning the LEOs, which is undermining them. They needed a complete change of thought as well as change of name, and they need to be out there. They need to be down and dirty, to understand where small businesses are at, and to be more urgent and responsive on a consistent basis. In terms of service, it should not matter whether a business is on one side of a county border or the other. These are persons putting their lives on the line to create opportunities for themselves and others, and they are entitled to the best possible service regardless of their geography, but that is not the way at present. The notion that the Government can continue to lean on the LEOs and put them up there as a great creation when all they are is a new name on a successful body has to change. The LEOs have to change as well. They have to be more hungry and more consistent in the services that they deliver.

Later, Deputy Michael McGrath will speak about the disparity in tax treatment. Deputy O'Dea has proposed increased PRSI benefits for the self-employed. He proposed a scheme under which the self-employed would be encouraged to pay into a fund, which would be there in the event of a business going under to support the self-employed while they retrain, re-imagine and re-launch themselves. That is a culture we need in this country. We need to believe in business people and we need to believe in business as a career opportunity. There are 65,000 students preparing to do the leaving certificate examination, and we want them to think of setting up a business in the same way they think of the professions or the trades, or the same way they think of going off to college for a few years. We want them to be comfortable in thinking that if it goes wrong and if, for whatever reason, the business does not work out, they will get back on the horse and start again, because that is the culture we need. As a country, as I have stated consistently, we love to celebrate failure. We love to see things not working out for somebody. We need to change that attitude. Instead of celebrating failure, we should acknowledge failure as part of the learning process in life. It makes one do something different. It makes one do it better on the next occasion. If we encourage such a culture, it is the kind of culture that will foster business.

On that basis, I wish everybody involved in the Student Enterprise Awards tomorrow every success. Those are the kinds of event, at transition year level and at college level, that are beginning to take hold around the country. Every student should have some understanding of business. Instead of isolating business studies at leaving certificate level, we need to make it a core subject to which students get exposure. Anybody taking up an apprenticeship or trade should be given business experience and business education so as to be equipped with the essentials that are needed.

Members, who are all in the same boat in their offices, meet many people looking for supports and backup. People repeatedly go looking for that support and cannot find it. Previously, I proposed to the Taoiseach - he undertook to pursue it, but that has not happened - that the best business database in this country is that of the Revenue Commissioners. One is hardly set up in business before the Revenue Commissioners are in touch. They would have the ability, if there was cohesion, organisation and interest in Deputy English's Department, to send to every business in this country a few times a year notice of the supports and grants available. Frankly, business people are too busy trying to keep their heads above water to go looking for that. If the Revenue Commissioners can send them every kind of correspondence going within weeks of their establishment, surely it can try to give them help as well. If there is to be one initiative that comes out of this debate, I ask the Minister of State, Deputy English, that this be it.

The other bodies that know more about business than businesses do are the local authorities. For local authorities, businesses are ATMs that they keep going to and that they keep trying to get cash out of. Eventually, for many businesses, the ATM says "No," because they cannot keep giving. Previously, I have told the story of a successful start-up employing ten people in the services sector in one county, which opened a branch in another county employing five people. This involved significant up-front investment on the part of the business owner. The first letter they got from the relevant local authority was not one welcoming the business to the county, thanking it for choosing that county to set up the business and stating the supports available. It was a demand for €6,500 in rates, a demand for water charges and a demand for parking levies that had not been paid. That was the welcome that was given. The attitude of many local authorities to business is that they are a cash cow or an ATM. They do not see businesses as customers. They do not see business as a partner in the development of their counties. That, too, has to change.

All in all, we have a system that does not understand business in 2015 and does not understand SMEs in 2015. It does not understand what it is like on a Friday evening after one has done a week's work, or a Saturday evening or a Sunday evening if one is working seven days. It does not understand what it is like not to have enough money to pay one's self after paying everybody else. A business owner might have paid the Revenue Commissioners, the local authority and the staff, and is then left without anything. Until that system is forced to change, we will continue to treat business as some sort of pet - something to be stroked, patted on the head every day and told, "You are a good boy. Sit, boy. Stand still, boy," while we do nothing to give them a hand and allow them to use their teeth. Let us get some ideas over the next two nights but, more importantly, let us do something about it.

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