Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The Minister knows well there are major problems in this area and the bias, although not specific, comes from the manner in which the contracts are constructed and the reality, as a result, is that small and micro-businesses end up being unfairly disadvantaged. The proof is that Irish manufacturers which may have previously made uniforms for State services or provided school books and so on - businesses that have operated for decades - are no longer there. Much of the business has gone to international corporations.

The Minister is, frankly, wrong in saying that 66% of public service expenditure is with SMEs. That is not correct. The reality is that 97% of Ireland's small businesses have fewer than 40 employees. The Minister, for the purpose of this issue, counts an SME as a company with up to 250 employees. That is not a small or a medium-sized business. There are problems and small and medium-sized businesses have indicated that these relate to the manner in which contracts are constructed. The idea of saying to companies to get together and pretend they are one big company will not work for companies that naturally compete with each other. How come other countries can organise contracts to benefit their own types of businesses? For example, in Germany, all their trains are made by Siemens. Why is it that we cannot organise our contracts in Ireland to benefit the types of companies that are predominant here, which are small and medium businesses?

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