Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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My Department took part in the Inter-Departmental Group on Administrative Burden Reduction, as led by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation. As a consequence of this participation, my Department identified all legislation that imposes an administrative burden on business, listed the so-called information obligations (IOs) in each such piece of legislation and estimated in broad terms the burden that each IO imposes on business, according to the number of businesses affected, the frequency of obligation and the administrative time required to comply with the IO. The outcome of this work resulted in the identification of ten IOs, with all ten recording a 'low' burden affecting comparatively small populations of businesses with, at most, a frequency of once-per-annum completion.

In view of the comparatively minor nature of the administrative burdens identified, it was agreed at both Ministerial and Departmental level between my Department and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation that the identified IOs do not warrant detailed measurement and the preparation of simplification plans.

This agreement arose from the observation that international evidence suggests that approximately 90 per cent of administrative costs is caused by approximately 5 per cent of regulation. Accordingly, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation is taking the approach that it would be wasteful of resources to engage in a complex and costly process of detailed burden measurement and reduction for all Irish regulation. Instead, the core principle of that Department's methodology is that it is seeking to identify the 5 per cent of regulation that is most burdensome and to subject only that 5 per cent to detailed burden measurement and simplification.