Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)

I will be as concise as possible. I thank the Minister for coming to the House. As I travel around the country visiting my colleagues, associates and friends, small-business owners and people who would like to start a business, one of the points I keep hearing is the terrifying amount of administrative compliance required and the knowledge, time, energy and talent needed to deal with it. In a previous contribution I identified one very simple step to reducing administrative costs for small businesses. This comes in the form of an optional directive agreed in February at a meeting of finance Ministers of the European Union. The directive would allow small companies to be exempted from publishing annual accounts in a bid to lessen their bureaucratic costs and to encourage small firms to take on more staff. The rules will apply to companies which have an average of ten employees or fewer within the course of an accounting year, with a balance sheet of under €350,000 and a net turnover of €700,000.