Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have to begin with the most important thing that is affecting so many small companies throughout the country. Firs, however, I must declare that I have an interest in a family plant hire firm. I must write it up and leave it here because I seem to be telling this story every day, and several times on some days. My brother also has a small shop, so I have to declare those interests.

Small sole traders and small hardware suppliers, different kinds of people who are only barely existing in many places - they are family units working together and trying to keep their houses and families going - seem to be getting an awful doing on a constant basis from larger companies which go bust. After a few months or maybe a year, those big companies are up and running again but the poor small companies are left behind. They do not get paid and they have no redress. It is not a level playing field as far as those companies are concerned. Many of these small operators do the work but they are only classed as subcontractors because the big, principal contractors get the jobs. The reason for this is that there is a pre-qualification requirement that a company has to have a certain amount of millions of turnover. For many jobs, this means that there are only four or five people who can actually tender for it. If these companies do not take proper care in their operations or if they have tendered incorrectly they will catch the small fellow.

A few years ago one such company went bust. It provided accounts before Christmas to show that it had €4.5 million worth of rolling stock. By St. Patrick's Day of the following year, it was bust and many small business people who had borrowed and who were trying to keep going were left without their money. I hope someone is listening to me. Those people grouped together and wrote to the Director of Corporate Enforcement, who, at that time, was Mr. Paul Appleby. They explained how much this principal contractor had in assets and how he had acquired the assets. The Director of Corporate Enforcement wrote to the receiver who was appointed by the principal contractor. The latter got his solicitor to write to this unfortunate group of peopleto challenge them to prove what they were saying. I would have thought that it would have been in the interests of the Director of Corporate Enforcement to find out if what these people were saying was right, but that is not what happened. They had to withdraw under pressure from the principal contractor's solicitor. Is it a fair country we are operating in? We feel that the receiver was appointed by the principal contractor that was going bust. It should not happen that way. A receiver should be independently selected by the Director of Corporate Enforcement in the interests of fairness to everyone.

That was not fair because those poor people were left without their money. That principal contractor is back working again and he still has all the assets he acquired through the company he let go bust. That is happening day after day to the small fellows because they cannot survive. The big conglomerates are catching the small fellows, so to speak. The big companies are able to siphon off assets and come up with many other ways of surviving and getting back in action again. The small operators have to abide by all the rules and regulations. They are out there doing the work, abiding by all the health and safety regulations and so on. In many cases, they are personally responsible if anything goes wrong. The principal contractor can get away with that under the guise that it was the small operators who were doing the actual work on the ground, and often ends up not paying them at all. Many people believe that is very wrong and that the Director of Corporate Enforcement or that section of the law is not holding these principal contractors to account.

The multinational supermarkets represent unfair competition for small shops throughout the country. They have offers which tempt the customers to shop in them. In time, they will have a monopoly and there will be no small shop in rural areas like Sneem, Gneevgullia or Scartaglin. If someone wants to make a simple purchase in the morning like a bottle of milk, they may have to drive ten miles to the nearest big supermarket.

Mention was made earlier of Seán Quinn. When that case happened a number of years ago, many people looked up to Seán Quinn in terms of the employment he provided. I do not agree with Deputy Mattie McGrath that he gambled. I believe he did not gamble. It was clear that Anglo Irish Bank falsified its yearly accounts to show it had much more on deposit than it had. Seán Quinn took its word and invested in more shares. That was the mistake he made, but he was led by the yearly accounts, which were clearly falsified. We have not heard of anyone sorting that out yet. As I understand it, Seán Quinn has not got any fair play in that regard.

Vulture funds were mentioned also. I know of a family living over their business that owed €900,000. A vulture fund now has that case and it will not sell the business, which is actually a home, back to the owners for what they owed.

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