Noel O'Donovan (Fine Gael)

My constituency colleague in west Cork pipped me to the post in congratulating Cork GAA on its success at the weekend. I congratulate the Cork set-up both on and off the field and my own clubman, Kevin O'Donovan, the CEO of Cork GAA, on his work in recent years with Cork GAA. I hope it will bring us back to the place we want to be. As Senators, we all see the value that sport and GAA bring to communities. It is great to see communities in County Cork coming alive again in red.

I will raise two matters in support of my colleague, Senator Nelson Murray, on the personal injuries issue that is coming about. I, too, have been contacted by businesses in recent days about their fears of increased costs and commend the Senator on her work. I remind Senator O'Loughlin that it was in fact the Minister, Deputy McEntee, who introduced this framework. The guidelines were welcome when they were introduced for setting clear cost guidelines. We are now asking that costs and awards not be increased. We call on all Cabinet colleagues in all parties to ensure businesses are supported and no costs are increased.

I commend the recent work done by the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Deputy Peter Burke, on a cost-of-business analysis and the creation of a new advisory forum to look at the costs facing businesses. We will see the 9% VAT rate discussed in the coming months. That is one issue but there are many more areas where we need to reduce costs for businesses.

In recent weeks, I have met representatives of a number of chambers of commerce in west Cork. They spoke about the costs involved in running their chambers of commerce and the voluntary initiatives they put on in their towns and villages. They mentioned the cost of insurance, the cost of putting in place Christmas lights and many other costs they have. It is time we developed a funding mechanism to support chambers of commerce. I would like to raise this with the Ministers for enterprise and community and rural affairs if they are in this Chamber in the coming weeks. I would welcome a comment on that by the Leader.