Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State.

I love this debate. The debate is so good to hear. I have listened to every word of almost everyone who has spoken. I particularly enjoyed the contribution of Senator Mary Ann O'Brien.

I speak as somebody with experience of what is going on. Let me tell the House a little story - I do not remember where it came from - about the burger seller in the United States. He had a business that he had run for many years, a little stall from which he sold his burgers. He did so well he was able to afford to send his son to college. His son went to college and came back and said to his father, "Dad, do you not realise there is a recession? Would you not be wise to cut back on those burgers and not be stocking as many as you had? Is there a need for you to work as many hours as you do? There is a recession, Dad." The burger seller cut back on the amount of stock he had and, amazingly, there must have been a recession because his business went down. Therefore, he cut down a little bit more and the business went down more. The burger seller said, "My son was so wise to remind me," but, of course, the whole story came the other way round. What we and the Minister of State must do is get us out of this situation where we are almost talking ourselves into the difficulty, and I do not know how he and we will do it here. Let us establish confidence, however we do it. It will not happen only from Government, it will not happen from the Seanad and it will not happen from the media. We are not only believing in good news for the sake of good news, but we do need to establish confidence. We need to establish that one can do something with it.

I spent quite some time lately in Drogheda. I remember going to Drogheda on one occasion and meeting two men on the street who were unemployed and asking them how long they had been unemployed. One of them said to me, "I applied for a job six months ago and did not get it, but what else can I do?" I came home that afternoon and there was a knock on the door from two young men who had invested in a piece of equipment to clean cars. They asked did I need my car cleaned. My car - I do not have a look at it too often - needs cleaning quite regularly and I told them it would be great if I could get it cleaned there, just in front of my house. The two boys gave me the set-up, cleaned the car and got paid for it. They got four more jobs on our road that same weekend. These were two students who started themselves. They were not asking what more they could do. They had gone out and did something about it, looked for a market, found it and were able to achieve it.

I have spoken previously about that young lady in County Kildare in transition year. She attended one of the entrepreneurial classes that Jerry Kennelly ran in Kerry over the past four years and came up with a concept or idea. The students were told one is never too young to be an entrepreneur. She came up with the idea to produce a product that she could sell and now that she is aged 16 and in fifth year, she employs her father and sells the product over the Internet to customers in 22 countries.

There are many more success stories. I recently stepped down as chairman of Eurocommerce after serving in that role for several years. Eurocommerce, which is based in Brussels, represents businesses operating in retail, wholesale and international trade. There are 6 million outlets in the 27 member states of the European Union. Some of them are failing or encountering difficulties but others are successful. That is how we must sell ourselves. People are finding ways of doing something different by looking for success stories. Those 6 million outlets employ 31 million people in retail, wholesale, trade and commerce. This is an area in which one can quickly get active because significant amounts of foreign direct investment are not necessary.

One way that we can expand the sector is by encouraging people to set up their own businesses, even if they are small. I previously sat on a local partnership committee for one of our supermarkets. The partnership aimed to create jobs. Our supermarket had a number of windows which needed to be cleaned, as well as other tasks that could be performed locally but the majority of people who attended the meetings wanted to call on Forfás or FÁS to assist them. They were not thinking about doing it for themselves. One young man offered his services to clean windows. He had a ladder and a bicycle and he invested in a bucket to establish a window cleaning service which he sold at the end of the summer when he went to college. The window cleaning business, which heretofore was supplied from another town, was still going many years later. When a retired man asked me if there was anything else that could be done, I told him I would love to be able to provide salads on the spur of the moment. He grew lettuce in his back garden so that we could purchase from him if we ran out of supplies during the day. I tell these stories because, while the report is very good, I hope the Government will be able to do something about it. I hope it is facing up to the challenge of supporting small businesses.

A number of speakers mentioned the issue of red tape. The report states:

The number of licences required by a single business, the cost, and the renewal process are particularly onerous. Following on from this, the unco-ordinated manner in which a range of regulatory inspections is undertaken also places an additional burden on firms. There is definitely potential for a more coherent approach among enforcement and inspection agencies.

I have long argued for less red tape. We should not tar every business with the same brush just because certain banks ran wild during the boom. The report quotes a business person as follows:

In the waste collection business, I have to place an advertisement in the newspaper every time I have to renew a licence and go through the whole application process all over again. The time and cost to small business is onerous and unnecessary.

We should not be shy about buying Irish. Some years ago, our company decided to do something about buying local. This was a very interesting project because it brought the issue home to us. We visited the various factories in the vicinity of our Finglas branch to find out how many they employed. This reminded me about all the local factories that employed 30, 50 or 60 people.