Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Indeed we will not.

The Senator should give me a list of the things on which we can have a small business exemption and I will consider them. Most regulation concerns the environment and protection of workers. We protect people with good reason. These are good standards for doing business. We do not want to dilute important ones. We can consider flexibility for some companies. Crowd funding has potential. It is probably untested. I will look to see if we can do something in that area. It is one that several Deputies and Senators are interested in.

I agree absolutely that we need to get more information out about how students fare. The fact that some areas of engineering get a 100% placement and could get 200% if we had the places does not get through to career guidance counsellors or to parents who are influencing the choices. The information on where the new economy is creating employment is not flowing back effectively into the education system.

Senator Kelly asked whether we can move from valuation to turnover and profit. That really involves a corporate tax, not a property tax. I have seen the revaluation which is based on the rental value in Waterford where it causes as much frustration as gain. I cannot remember whether it was hotels or nursing homes that saw a big increase in valuation. Industry saw improvement. Other sectors saw damage. Revaluation is not a universal boon. If one is trying to raise €500 million, revaluation is only sharing it out among businesses, it is not reducing the amount. We need to focus on trying to reduce the €500 million and every local authority is reducing its business rates. I am not sure about shifting to profits. That is not the basis for a property tax. There is a debate about whether it should be site value. If the Senator can give me examples of the Libyan involvement we can examine the individual cases to see what went wrong. I would be very keen to look at that.

The IDA and Enterprise Ireland are searching their portfolios to identify companies that could use the MBNA workforce. There is a stronger business process outsourcing sector with a lot of strong regional companies. I am determined to keep after that opportunity. I dealt with Drumshanbo and absolutely agree with Senator Mooney.