Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Echoing that sentiment, I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House to address this important issue. I compliment the Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath and Donohoe, and their ministerial team, including the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, on the work done on the budget. It was a momentous budget, one that was historic in many respects. It set the tone and template for the achievements of the Government. It is often the case that actions in a budget can have unintended consequences. One such unintended consequence relates to the measure to assist businesses that will grapple with rising costs in the coming 12 to 18 months. I will deal with that later.

Obviously, the Finance (No. 2) Bill is progressing through the House. We agreed Second Stage last night and the Bill has gone to the select committee. I know from my conversation with the Minister, Deputy McGrath, that there is still an opportunity to fine-tune the cost of business support scheme and make it a much more inclusive scheme to address the challenges facing many businesses. We are very much dealing with a changed landscape for business. Covid transformed the way business is operated. We have a generation of young people who will probably never go into a bricks-and-mortar shop but, rather, do the predominance of their shopping online. Retailers have responded. They are doing experiential retail and it is very different.

To put my point forward in the best manner possible, I will articulate the comments and sentiments of a business owner who contacted me on this issue in recent days. His is a long-established family business in Longford employing 80 people. He has taken issue with what he sees as the shortcomings and inadequacies of the budget in trying to alleviate the challenges his business and contemporaries will face in the coming 12 to 18 months. The business employs 80 people, all of whom are from the locality. It provides part-time employment to many students who balance that work with their college life. Many people had their first job there. The business owner makes the point that the proposed business scheme will go nowhere close to addressing the serious issue faced by his business and many others. The business will not qualify as it is over the €20,000 rates threshold, notwithstanding the fact that it very much operates a low-margin and labour- and energy-intensive business where the biggest cost is the wage bill.

That business and many others will soon have to deal with the increased minimum wage, statutory sick pay and, further down the road, pension auto-enrolment. Those are laudable developments and key planks in the programme for Government but, much as we have in society, we need a glass floor through which no people should fall. We should also have a mechanism that ensures businesses that have been the bedrock of local communities for many years are not punished. The business to which I have referred would make the point that its largest cost, namely, wages, increased by 25% as a result of some of the measures I outlined. The measures will add an additional cost of approximately €4,000 per full-time employee, which is significant for a business that typically operates on a margin of 8% to 9%.

The business has done everything humanly possible in respect of packaging and meeting our challenges for the green agenda but it is one of many businesses that will struggle. We need to use the time and space in the coming weeks to tweak the Finance (No. 2) Bill to ensure we do not throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater.

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