Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I acknowledge that he had a Private Members' motion on this issue on the Order Paper this week. I understand it will now be taken next week. The Government will respond to that motion. I agree with the Deputy that SMEs are the lifeblood of towns, villages and communities. The Government values them. As the Deputy has acknowledged, the Government supported small businesses in particular to a great extent over the past number of years. We provided Government support through wage subsidy schemes of more than €10 billion to support wages in the private sector because it was the right thing to do. Approximately €1.5 billion of commercial rates were waived. A range of other support schemes, including restart schemes, were administered by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. We want to support viable businesses. Nobody wants to see any business close. It should be acknowledged that new businesses are opening all the time. In the most recent budget, we provided extensive support to our economy to help the customers of those businesses. Those supports included a cost-of-living package of around €2.7 billion, a full-year income tax package of €1.3 billion and a social welfare permanent package of more than €1 billion. That is more than €5 billion of measures to help to put money in the pockets of the customers of those businesses.

That said, we acknowledge that policy decisions made by the Government, which individually are all very good, have contributed to a challenging environment for many businesses. I refer in particular to the increase in the minimum wage, changes to sick pay and PRSI, and further planned changes for auto-enrolment and so on. The Government acknowledges that, which is why the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Ministers of State, Deputies Calleary and Richmond, have been doing work to assess the cumulative impact of changes in policy and other changes that have resulted in the cost base of businesses increasing significantly. My focus has been on making changes to the tax debt warehousing regime, which I announced at the beginning of this week, essentially eliminating interest on tax debt that has been warehoused. That will be of benefit to tens of thousands of businesses. Any business that has already paid interest on the warehoused tax debt will have it refunded by the Revenue Commissioners. The Revenue Commissioners have confirmed that they will be as flexible as possible in agreeing phased payment arrangements for the clearing of the tax debt over a period. The standard period is three to five years but they have the discretion to go beyond that in individual cases.

In addition, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is working with local authorities to finalise arrangements for the payment of the increased cost-of-doing-business grant. It is expected that businesses will be corresponded with in the next couple of weeks in regard to those arrangements.

See this speech in context