Feargal Quinn (Independent)

The Minister of State is most welcome.

I welcome the objectives of the Bill, although I am concerned about some aspects of it. In 1989 I had the opportunity to visit Leningrad, then part of the old Soviet Union. I asked our guide, Ludmila, if I could visit a supermarket. The one to which I was taken was very dull and plain and did not offer a great range of goods. When I asked the supermarket manager how many customers he had, he answered that he had 4,687. I was very impressed that he knew the exact number because it was clear the cash register system was not very modern. When I asked him how he could be so precise in knowing the number of customers, he replied that this was the number of people who lived in the suburb in which the supermarket was located. When I asked if they all shopped in his supermarket, he said, "Of course." He also said that if the suburb was bigger, the shop would be bigger. Conversely, if the suburb was smaller, the shop would also be smaller. In other words, there was only one shop in the suburb. In those days in that society things were controlled from the top rather than being decided by the marketplace. What I like about the legislation under discussion is that it is aimed at stimulating rather than controlling the marketplace. However, I am not happy with one or two aspects of it.

In the 1980s I was chairman of a hospital board at a time when the unemployment rate was high and the economy was not doing well. The Government of the day introduced a job creation project. The hospital was asked to state how many jobs it had created in a given month. It was asked, for instance, how many porters had been employed. There did not seem to be an understanding that it was not the Government's role to create jobs. It can stimulate the economy by ensuring people are encouraged to create jobs, whether in hospitals, shops or restaurants. I, therefore, recommend the objectives of this Bill because some of the important measures proposed will work very well. The jobs initiative amounts to much-needed strong action on the part of the Government to stimulate the market economy.

As a retailer, I am particularly happy to see a cut in the rate of VAT, in hotels and restaurants in particular. The tourism business can create jobs more quickly than other businesses. There is no doubt that foreign direct investment leads to the creation of jobs and that the process has been very successful, but it takes time. However, the Government seems to have recognised that a tweaking of the VAT rate will enable us to create jobs very quickly. Shops can be opened very quickly if people start to spend money. The cut in the rate of employers' PRSI in respect of lower paid jobs will make it easier for employers to employ workers whom they would not be able to afford otherwise. Another element that needs to be examined very carefully is rent reduction. I urge the Government to review the policy on rents, as something must be done about it.

Something must also be done about the old-fashioned system of Sunday payments, which harks back to the age of the old Soviet Union, as it does not depend on the state of the marketplace. Many restaurants know that some are willing to work on a Sunday at a certain rate, but they are not allowed to be employed because of arrangements made in the past which state they must be paid a premium rate. It seems many restaurants no longer open on a Sunday because of the cost of premium payments which are 34% higher than in England. We should consider what can be done in this regard.

I remember being in a shop in Dundalk that closed about two years ago. I asked some of the butchers about their employment prospects once the shop closed and they replied that they might have to emigrate. I suggested they could try to seek employment in Newry, only a 15-minute drive from Dundalk. However, they said butchers in Newry were paid only one third of what they were earning in Dundalk. This gives one some indication that we will not be able to compete unless we manage to bring down our costs. This has become a high-cost operation and economy. I have been urging the Government to introduce a measure to analyse whether new legislation will impose more red tape on businesses.

I suggest that at some stage we should have a debate in the House on the National Competitiveness Council which last year stated it was concerned there was not a strong desire to tackle high costs in certain sheltered sectors. It also stated a rigorous review of laws, rules and customs governing locally traded sectors was required to identify barriers to promoting enhanced competition and that the State should use its purchasing power to exert downward pressure on professional fees. This has been a source of controversy recently. I ask the Government to act and co-ordinate the efforts of a group which could pick out certain parts of law that hinder businesses, competitiveness and the ability of employers to hire more workers and expand. This could be done easily and quickly and would be extremely inexpensive.

Since it began six weeks ago I have been involved in promoting the towns of excellence campaign which encourages various towns to improve the level of their customer service. It is an opportunity for individual towns to attract more business. Bill Gates has said a company's most unhappy customers are its greatest source of learning. Years ago I was involved in setting up customer panels in order that I could determine what it was customers wanted. What was much more valuable was having non-customer panels, in other words people who said they did not shop with me, because it was much more important to learn why.

A new report on competitiveness from Goodbody Stockbrokers showed that our competitiveness is improving and that unit labour costs have fallen by 9%, relative to the rest of the eurozone in 2009-10 and are expected to decline by a further 4% in the coming year. The report also discussed other areas. We have many highly skilled graduates who could transfer the skills they have learned from a number of companies. I was involved with another group called Springboard which the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, launched recently. It encourages people who have certain skills that are not necessary or suitable at the moment. It can be a future benefit.

The legislation we have means that the research and development tax credit regime is getting a boost and gives flexibility to companies in terms of how they account for the credit. It is hoped that it will help multinational companies market their Irish operations internally. We should think of even more ideas to help set the conditions for businesses to create jobs. For example, the Connecticut State Senate passed a jobs initiative recently. The so-called first five programme allows the state's economic development commissioner to offer special incentives to the first five businesses that can each bring a minimum of 200 new full-time jobs to the state within two years. Incentives would also be offered to companies that have made a $25 million investment in Connecticut and operate 200 jobs over five years. It is an initiative which may be worth following.

I encourage people not to be shy about setting up a business. I was involved with a partnership scheme some years ago and discovered when I went to the first meeting that everybody else wanted to contact the IDA, the Government or a Minister to do something for them. Some of us asked people if they could start businesses themselves, even if they were young people. I remember one man started a business. He was a student and in May or June he had a bicycle, rented a ladder and took his mother's bucket and set up a window cleaning business. At the end of the year he was able to sell it on to somebody else who could generate work. I mention this because one thing we can do is encourage people to set up their own businesses even if they are very small.