Resolutions due as black economy costs €5bn a year

The Government will be presented with a series of policy recommendations regarding the black economy, which is denying the State an estimated €5bn tax take per year, within the next six months.

After listening to proposals from the Small Firms Association and Isme, the chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Fine Gael’s Damien English, said the committee hoped to have a report ready for Government by the end of October. The report will be based on feedback received from public hearings and industry bodies such as Isme, the SFA, RGData, and Retail Ireland.

“The impact of the black market on small business is an issue of concern for the committee and one to which we are devoting a lot of time and attention,” said Mr English.

“It is important that we, as a committee with a remit in the area of jobs, enterprise and innovation, continue to play our part in contributing to achieving progress on this subject and finding new potential solutions to the problem and to protect small retail businesses.”

The SFA said that, prior to the recession, Ireland’s “hidden economy” was worth 14% of GDP, equating to €500m being generated each month to which Revenue has no access, about 4% below the EU average.

Yesterday’s meeting was broadly supportive of arguments put forward by both the SFA and ISME, but Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary questioned how effective a public awareness campaign might really be, while Labour’s John Lyons suggested it was a wider problem that called for a complete culture change in Irish society in order to rectify.

SFA chairman AJ Noonan, who has suggested Ireland’s black economy issue may have to be settled via European intervention, said he was “open to ideas” about how proposals could be worked, but said more focused attempts to tackle the problem are “overdue”.