Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State for gathering the respective minds and the group representatives who worked within the small business sector to compile this report. I welcome the opportunity today to discuss the report, given my personal background outside this House. I am what is called a serial entrepreneur - it is all I think about. I love business and have at least ten ideas a month for starting something new. If anybody has any money they can come to me.

Like many people in the business community, I have believed for many years that a proactive and, very important, a joined-up approach was required. It is very important that it is not only this Minister of State, Deputy Perry, who is involved. I hope every Department, every Minister and all his colleagues will join him. The words I use are "small business". I used to think the appeal was chocolate and saucepans. However, we are the life and blood of this country. All Members have read the figures today and can read them in the report. There are 200,000 of us, we employ so many yet we are going downhill. This is not an easy situation. It will take much more than Senators today to work it out. It will take the entire Government to address this problem.

The approach of the Minister of State is to involve representatives from the business world. I like the notion of him travelling the country. The formulation of this report is to be welcomed by all of us. I strongly encourage the Minister of State to continue doing this in the immediate future and to feel the urgency we in the business community feel. He cannot act quickly enough for us.

I will skim through some of the main points in the report, touching on lending facilities, the banks, the labour market costs, local authority structures, helping small businesses to compete on a level playing field and helping businesses to help themselves when they find themselves in crisis. There is also the hidden economy. None of these points are new to any of us who are business owners.

I respect the Minister of State's report but I shall refer to the year 2008. I believe it was February of that year that I froze the management team's salary. That was a big deal. By August I had frozen the salaries of the entire factory. The word was, "There is lovely Mary Ann, always so nice and for whom everything is wonderful, freezing our salaries". In September's news, KPMG and Deloitte froze their staffs' salaries and so it began. I felt the chill very early on. While I accept the emotional female charge, for the next eight months I cried most days and evenings at home. A workforce is like a child but in this case it was 100 people relying on me.

Every Thursday, a wage bill of €45,000 had to be met. My main problem was with the banks. I will not go into names as we are not allowed, a Chathaoirligh. My business was viable and good but I had a cash flow crisis. Before the credit crunch, I always received a stocking loan. This time I did not. Many businesses have since gone because of refusals for stocking loans by the banks. I was lucky that Enterprise Ireland and a private investor lent me the money to tide me over. They saw I was a well-run, sustainable and indigenous business.

Everyone hears the sums bandied around that the banks are supposedly lending to small and medium-sized businesses. They are not lending such sums. Out of 20 friends with good businesses, some have gone simply because of the banks. The State owns the banks now so we must make them accountable. I love horse-racing and gamble much. My bets on horses are on a par with the banks' bondholders. I wish I was a bondholder when I invested in property. While I lost every penny in my investments, they have not. We should be cushioning business owners as well as mortgage holders who have lost their jobs and who are in desperation as to how they will pay their mortgages. It must be remembered they are the customers of the small businesses.

Small businesses create tax intakes for the Government which, hopefully, it reinvests in the community which, in turn, spends in our small businesses. However, this wonderful circle has been broken. Our money is going to the troika, which kindly lent us all this money, and bondholders. If we do nothing else this year, can we at least put up a fight?

Last night I spoke to the president of RGDATA who informed me up to 300 retailers have closed in the past 18 months. The brilliant economist Jim Power, who is passionate about buying Irish, a campaign which politicians are not supposed to talk about because of EU legislation, has stated money spent at a local family-owned store generates three times more in the local economy than money spent in one of the large multiples. Like Senator White, I accept it is great the multiples came here and that they provide me with export opportunities. However, at the moment we are trying to save Ireland.

The independent retail, grocery and convenient sector consists of approximately 5,000 shops and is responsible for providing 93,000 full-time jobs. It makes a total contribution to the economy of approximately €3.6 billion. I want to repeat that we should buy Irish. Senators are a different breed. The 60 Members should buy Irish produce at Tesco.

Will the Minister of State have a discussion with the Minister for Social Protection on her proposed changes to the sick leave regime, which could seriously hamper small and medium-sized businesses? I spoke to her previously in the Seanad about how her proposals continue to be a concern to me and other businesses. This continues to worry me. I love human beings. Some are great and they are all different. Some of us are brilliant engineers, mad entrepreneurs or good accountants but we are all human beings and I would love two or three extra weeks off a year. I know some of my staff well and I said to them this morning: "There are 100 of us. Don't tell me that 50 of us will not go to the doctor to say I have a ferocious sore throat or a pain in my hip." If 50 of my staff take three weeks off when this measure goes through, that will equate to 150 weeks or three additional salaries coming off the bottom line. My company does not have fewer than ten or fewer than 50 staff and that measure will kill me. I cannot cope. I will have to try to meet the Minister of State.