Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Regional Group for bringing forward this motion. It is important. It is timely that we are speaking on it this morning. I, like all other TDs and my colleagues, live in a community in which businesses are struggling. I cannot remember a time when so many businesses were concerned about escalating costs which they just cannot manage. Many are family-owned businesses that employ two, three or four people. They cannot even take a wage themselves at the end of the week. Something is drastically wrong. There are 304,947 SMEs operating in Ireland and 99% of active enterprises employ 70% of the workforce. I ask that the Government focuses on what those businesses need. I am afraid that the Government has stopped listening to the struggles these businesses are going through. The majority of these firms are family-owned, established, non-export businesses or businesses that have just started up. We need them as employers in our communities. If you walk around any town, you can see many of those businesses that do not want to shut down making the decision to shut down.

Why are they doing so? It is because they are sick and tired of announcements by the Government from which nothing ever materialises. My colleague, Deputy O'Reilly, has just pointed out that we are sending €1 billion that was earmarked for small and medium businesses back to the Exchequer to do something else with. Businesses are asking me how we are doing that. Is it that these businesses are not important enough? We have to ask why these businesses are shutting down and struggling so much. As I have mentioned, there was a situation in respect of LNG that led to a great many businesses being excluded from TBESS. An awful lot of these schemes discriminate against people in rural Ireland who do not have natural gas. I ask the Government to wake up and to see what is happening with small businesses. Astronomical rates are being charged. Businesses just cannot afford them. They are on their knees. There has to be a collective effort to ensure that these businesses survive in these counties and continue doing the good job they have done for a great many years.

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