Paul Connaughton (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to speak on this. It is certainly a worthwhile topic. In the space of two minutes, there are only two or three areas I will cover.

If we all believe in the mantra that Government does not create jobs and it simply creates the environment for jobs to be created, there is a number of areas on which we must focus. It was stated previously that we need to have more supports for businesses to set up. Many of those I have met in the past few months who set up businesses ten or 15 years ago had no support and what they say now is we should take away the bureaucracy and the red tape. If the Minister did that alone, he would give them a better opportunity, not only to keep creating jobs but expanding where they can create these jobs. It is not so much what we can give to these people but what we can do to help them streamline the way they do their business.

Another area of considerable concern is Government procurement. The Government has set out to save millions of euro on procurement and it all sounds good because it will streamline where it gets its products from. However, this is crippling a number of SMEs because they are making it impossible for small-to-medium-sized businesses to tender for this work. For example, the Irish School Art Supply Federation operates in a small niche market. I refer to SMEs employing five, ten or 15 employees supplying products to the local primary and secondary schools. We will save money on the procurement of these products, but is there anyone in that procurement office thinking of the potential job losses on the flip-side of it? It is nice to go back and say we saved the State and the taxpayer €50 million, €90 million or €100 million, but what did we cost ourselves in social protection where businesses could not tender for these products and all of a sudden, they closed? I am aware of two family-run businesses, one in Dublin and one in Mayo, in the past three or four weeks that have closed which would have had the potential to employ more workers and what is really killing us in that area is a lack of joined-up thinking. The guys in procurement will save the money, but did they talk to the Department of Social Protection? Did they ask them who is going on the live register because of that? This is what is crippling SMEs. Much has been done, but if we simply got rid of the red tape, took care of the bureaucracy and listened to the guys on the ground, we would stand a lot better off.

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