Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have mentioned this to the Minister on a number of occasions and, unfortunately, I hate to have to report that we have not seen any progress on the closing of the competitiveness gap which exists. The Minister quoted the world rankings to me, but she will know we dropped to 18th place out of 189 economies in the Ease of Doing Business report. We have now fallen behind Georgia, Latvia, Estonia and Macedonia in the global rankings. This is a very telling statistic to compare how we are doing vis-à-visother jurisdictions in terms of competitiveness. It is extremely worrying, bearing in mind the Taoiseach committed to making us the best small country in the world in which to do business. I want to ask the Minister about the capital gains tax, CGT, relief which applies to entrepreneurial gains, and I have raised this issue with her previously. As she knows, the 10% rate of CGT applies to entrepreneurs up to a limit of £10 million in the UK. We have a very unfavourable regime in this country. Young entrepreneurs will go to the UK and seek to generate enterprise and business there because they are not getting the same break here. Can we please look at our corporation tax rate, in particular for entrepreneurial start-ups?

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