Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCeann Comhairle. I am not sure if my other colleagues will be joining us. I am glad to be able to speak today on this as well.

While it is of vital importance and very noble that we have a pension for employees who are not in the public sector, this is coming on top of so many other pieces of regulation and bureaucracy, especially for small businesses. I have to declare an interest as I speak as one of them myself. My business has up to 25 employees and we have offered pensions to them over the past ten years, and there is opt-in and opt-out. I am afraid of this big sweeping brush the Minister has brought down from the, well, I cannot say the hills of County Cavan, but perhaps the boggy land or the turf areas of the county. One broom sweeps all. This is going to have a disproportionate impact on businesses, especially ag an am seo. Businesses are just hanging on by their fingernails at the moment. Deputy Collins raised this issue with the Taoiseach earlier during Leader's Questions. Quite honestly, the Taoiseach, many Ministers and many officials who are being paid from the public purse do not get how difficult it is to keep the doras ar oscailt gach maidin. It is just a nightmare. This has especially been the case since Covid, Brexit and you name it.

I have just come from a policy briefing with people who want to plant land. It is just an impossibility. We have been here like a bad record, especially since this Government came in and the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. Forestry is being decimated. The knock-on impact is that we are not going to have the carbon sink from those trees because we do not have them planted. I am sorry for digressing, but there are many self-employed people in forestry as well. To get into forestry now, it is necessary to get a licence to plant, a licence to thin, a licence to put in roadways and a licence to fell trees. I have missed one other licence. Someone needs to get a licence to insist on common sense in Departments because there is no common sense. It has just gone out the window. It has gone so bad with regulations and that kind of carry-on. We will set the spuds and sow the barley, if we can do so at all this year. The Ceann Comhairle will know this. We have an expectation and a right to sow and reap a crop to provide food and make a small profit, and, more importantly, supply the food chain.

What is going on in the forestry sector is just outrageous, but this situation is replicated across many sectors. On the matter of rates, I was talking to a businessman this morning who lost €100,000 in his fine big shop, petrol station and post office last year. What happened this year? His rates have not been doubled but trebled. There is no correlation between taking account of the difficulty of staying in business, keeping the doors open and the lights on, providing work, getting the contracts, fulfilling them, having the equipment to do them and having the good staff. These businesses have good staff. We have great staff in our business. We thank them and we could not manage without them. However, there is a need to go forward together here in a measured approach and to sit down with small companies and understanding there are limits. It is not possible for the Government to just say it is imposing a pension here.

Deputy Murnane O'Connor went down the same road as I am regarding this issue of the difficulties for small businesses, yet she is supporting this legislation and will vote for it There is no logic here. Businesses are on their knees and they will not be able to keep going. They are not able to keep going. As I said, it is every old thing. We were told the cost of insurance would come down, but it has gone through the roof. This will be the case until such time as the Judiciary is regulated, as well as the legal claims process and the whole revolving door situation. It is unbelievable.

Let us take businesses and retailers and the amount of pilfering and loss of goods and money. I heard only recently, regarding a big shop, that 30% of its business is being affected in this way. The members of the Garda are doing their jobs, if they can at all, and bringing people to court, but the people concerned are out again before the gardaí have left the courthouse and are back doing this again. We talk then about this system, which is noble. I do accept that people could not and cannot live on the old age pension. A couple might have some hope, but only with great difficulty. Unfortunately, however, if one of them gets sick and passes away, the widow or widower left will find it extremely difficult to live on the old age pension. This is driven by the spiralling costs of everything pensioners consume and need to consume with the dearest electricity prices in Europe and the dearest fuels. We are now being hit again in respect of the cost of fuels and home heating oil, carbon taxes, you name it.

We badly need common sense and an understanding and some kind of mechanism that allows people to opt in.

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