Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit chuig an Teach seo. Tréaslaím le Seanadóir Ó Céidigh as an díospóireacht tábhachtach sin a spreagadh. Ba mhaith liom cúpla focal a rá i dtaobh trí ábhar - costais árachais, rátaí agus Brexit. With regard to insurance costs, it is the case that approximately 14 years ago myself and the then Minister, Mary Harney, when we were both members of Government tackled the problem of rising insurance costs for employment and for other areas in a fairly radical way with the Personal Injuries Assessment Board and the statutory provisions to which reference was made earlier by Senator James Reilly. It seems that we are sliding backwards. At that stage there was a real problem in that, in addition to employer PRSI, employment insurance premiums were frequently of the order of between 9% and 12% of payroll. This meant that, before one even got to PAYE and all the rest of it, there was a 20% levy on employing people. That was serious burden for employers to bear. I say this as a lawyer and as somebody who would probably be in a minority within my own profession on this matter, but I really hope the Government is determined to tackle insurance costs. I hope the current investigation being conducted by the former judge, Nicholas Kearns, will bear fruit and that the Government will act on it. We did it 14 years ago. It can be done. It is not inevitable that insurance costs spiral. One only has to get into a taxi in Dublin and talk to the poor driver to hear that taxi drivers find themselves facing annual insurance bills of €2,000, €3,000, €4,000 and sometimes up to €5,000 to put their taxis on the road.

The second thing I want to say relates to rates. Rates are a huge imposition on those small and medium enterprises that cannot work on a virtual basis from homes or wherever else. Anybody who has to establish an office, a shop, a plant or a factory has to pay rates. There is one thing I want to say here. I am not suggesting that this should be the case but we, as a society, should ask ourselves whether it is fair that somebody in Senator Lawlor's constituency who tries to establish a small business in Naas should pay rates for a small office, shop or factory while somebody outside the town with a very large farm, 600 or 800 acres for example, and with huge farm buildings and many other buildings on his land pays nothing towards the cost of local government in his area. It is just a thought. It is not a very popular thought and I can imagine it is a lead balloon politically but I wonder, if rural Ireland is to prosper, is it fair that those who attempt to establish businesses in towns in Ireland - and I am thinking of Boyle in County Roscommon which has suffered such trauma since the financial crisis - pay a huge rates bill while people around them are running large enterprises which equally depend on local authority spending?

With regard to Brexit, there is one point that has been troubling me more and more. Is the United Kingdom to be bound by state aid rules after Brexit or are we on the island of Ireland to be in a situation in which we are bound by European rules about not aiding enterprise while the United Kingdom Government is free to subsidise businesses across the Border which compete with ours? That is an issue I have not heard much about in the whole Brexit debate. Are the rules against state aid to be made equal on either side of the Border? Those are my few thoughts on this important debate.