James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was waiting but the Ceann Comhairle took my joke. I join Deputy Flaherty in welcoming his guests. The issue we are discussing is of huge relevance at the moment. In my constituency of Cork East, whether in the local villages, towns or out in the countryside, time and again I meet small employers. I am not talking about the companies with between 50 and 100 employees. I am talking about the cafés, butcher shops, hairdressers, barbers, publicans or restaurateurs. The report coming back is unfortunately not good. It is concerning. As a Government TD, I never wanted to come in here and give heaps of unnecessary praise. I am conscious we have a new Minister of State and I congratulate her on her appointment. However, this is one of those areas where, as a Government, we perhaps need to acknowledge we made a few errors in the past few years. An enormous amount of good work was done around the pandemic supports, with more than €20 billion paid out in supports to individuals and businesses in this country but, following that, when traders got back up and running, we saw a rapid increase in inflation and the costs of doing business. In this House this morning I spoke about the deeply concerning issue of electricity prices and how far out of sync we are with the rest of Europe for unit price of commercial electricity. You also look at the changes around the minimum wage, how they have impacted small pubs or corner shops, and the bank holiday pay aspect of it. Obviously, there has been a change in the PRSI rules and regulations and that is really important, but we need to acknowledge we made a mistake. I put that on the record of the House.

The Department needs to have a way of diffentiating between companies that are in a position to pay their employees significantly above the minimum wage, or that have employees on the minimum wage but also have resources, and small businesses that are getting up and running. Starting a business is an incredibly difficult task. The risk on the business owner or entrepreneur that does that is enormous. In the case of restaurants, I believe that eight out of ten fail. The business package that has been put together is a positive move in the right direction. The forthcoming budget will be the last one the House passes before the election. We know that constitutionally we cannot have another. We have a chance to rectify some of the errors we made. I would rather see cafés and the other important small, local businesses that populate our main streets remaining open rather than closing them for the sake of adding another 20 cent onto the minimum wage.

There is also the electricity issue. Electricity firms in this country have gotten away with murder. They have been taking an excessively high amount of money from consumers. The profits within individual firms, and even ESB Networks, are excessively high but there seems to be little ambition on behalf of the Government to tackle them on this. When we look at the consumer protection aspect of what we fund in government, they are more interested in car parks in Dublin Airport than they are in this issue. It affects everybody. It affects small businesses and homes. From my perspective, this is something that the Department of the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, and her Cabinet colleague, the Minister, Deputy Burke, whom I also congratulate on his appointment, needs to put a strong focus on. These firms are making very significant profits.

The rates aspect for small businesses needs to be looked at for the upcoming budget. Local authorities are very quick to request that money and funding. However, we heard in this House this morning that Cork County Council has only paid out €100,000. It is the largest local authority per members in the State but it has only paid out €100,000 of the money that has been available. To me, that is completely unacceptable. Small business owners will be quick to tell you that when the rates are due, they are in. That is something I would also like to see happen.

I support what the Restaurant Association of Ireland is doing in respect of VAT. We have to look at the fact that the VAT rule change on restaurants and hospitality is having a big impact. We have seen 200 restaurants close since the start of the year. My fear is that if we allow this to persist, there will be nothing left on the main streets of many rural towns. I come from Youghal, County Cork. The vacancy numbers in Youghal are the highest in the entire county. It is sad to see. That is because it is so hard to get a business up and going. It might not affect urban cores like Dublin or Cork, even though businesses there have their challenges. It is in the small towns where you have to put aside economic prudence, for want of a better term, for the public good. The job of politicians in government is to decide where that line falls. At the moment it is falling too close on the side of managing the purse. The economy is doing well and something we could do to make a real difference is to focus on those main streets in rural towns to try to get the vacancy numbers down.

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