Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 30: To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation his proposals to reduce the administrative burden on small and medium sized enterprises. [27320/12]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department and its Agencies continue to focus on reducing administrative burdens on business, with a reduction of 24.8% already having been achieved; this amounts to annual savings for business of over €207 million. Details of all the initiatives making up this total are available on my Department's website.

Successful initiatives resulting in significant savings include:

§ In Company Law, savings of €82 million per annum have already been realised, more than €33 million of which are due to the work of the Companies Registration Office (CRO), as companies can submit their annual returns online via the CRO website and can now use digital signatures for the B1 Form and Accounts.

§ The audit exemption threshold has been increased to the maximum level permitted under EU law and the draft regulations are with the Office of Parliamentary Counsel for finalisation. This will achieve potential savings for Irish SMEs of approximately €2.8 million annually.

§ In Health & Safety Law, a total of €123 million in annual administrative savings for business has been delivered by the HSA via two key projects: the BeSMART online tool for preparing the Risk Assessment and Safety Statement (€59m), and the SMP20 Guidelines (€64m), which assist construction firms with fewer than 20 employees in establishing and maintaining an effective safety management system.

The reform of the State's Workplace Relations Services, that I set in train last year, will, among other matters, deliver a simplified two-tiered structure comprising a single body of first instance, the Workplace Relations Commission, and a single body of appeal, in effect an enhanced Labour Court. This new structure will provide a better service for both employees and employers, with fewer delays and reduced administrative burdens. Already there has been some significant early progress, including the development of a single complaint form for all workplace relations complaints, the establishment of a single contact portal, Workplace Relations Customer Services, to handle all complaints and enquiries, the launch of a single website, www.workplacerelations.ie, containing all relevant information on employment rights and industrial relations and the commencement of a Pilot Early Resolution Service which will seek to resolve disputes without recourse to adjudication or inspection. Work has commenced on the drafting of a Workplace Relations Bill to give effect to this new structure.

My officials are currently using the Standard Cost Model to estimate the likely savings for business that will be delivered by the Workplace Relations Reform Programme, and will report on these later in the year. Estimates of the administrative burden savings that will arise from some of the simplified approaches within the Consolidated Companies Bill will also be produced.

My Department also coordinates the cross-Government measurement and reduction of administrative burdens towards the 25% target by the end of 2012. A project to measure the burden imposed by regulation under the responsibility of seven Departments and Revenue was initiated in September 2011. Following completion of its measurement exercise, each participating Department must then immediately begin planning how it will achieve the remaining reductions necessary to reach the target. The first cluster of Departments should report to Government with Simplification Plans by the end of the second quarter and the remaining Departments should report by the end of the third quarter.

Work is continuing to identify new areas where administrative burdens on business can be reduced and in this regard the High Level Group on Business Regulation has prioritised a number of areas for attention in its Work Programme for 2012.