Give small businesses the help they desperately need

THERE is very little incentive for a small business to set up in industry in this country.

Potential entrepreneurs are being “scared off” because they are expected to present intricate business proposals to the IDA which only accountants can understand. Small industrialists must present reports and projections up to the standard expected from multi-nationals. Yet, how often have these same multinationals disappeared when grant aid expired?

There is no breathing space for the small business. There is no incentive for anyone to set up business. The notorious system is loaded against them. Is it any wonder we have so many people on the dole queue? At times, the IDA have paid out millions of euro in order to create a few hundred jobs. They might as well provide smaller amounts of money to small business which, if they subsequently run into difficulties, will not involve mass redundancies.

For the benefit of entrepreneurs, I would appeal to the Government to devise a system whereby small industries, of 10 to 15 workers, would be granted a five-year remission of development charges, rates and taxation demands with a condition that they can’t discontinue and reopen under a different trade at the end of the five-year period.

Cllr Noel Collins

Midleton

Co Cork