Business Regulation Dail Éireann — 2026-07-15 ============================================================ Niamh Smyth (FF), Cavan-Monaghan I thank the Deputy, including for the energy he brings to the Oireachtas committee with responsibility for enterprise. He and his colleagues come from a genuine business background, so he is speaking from experience. That makes a huge difference at Oireachtas committees and in feeding into the work of the Department with me, the Minister, Deputy Burke, and the other Minister of State, Deputy Dillon. It is very helpful and very much appreciated. I thank the Deputy for the energy and experience he brings to his role. I want to outline the Department's priorities for Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union, centred on building a more competitive, innovative and resilient European economy. The Deputy's question is particularly around the regulatory burden. We have to have the relevant conversation knowing that, in the background, the evidence is available from the Draghi and Letta reports that right across Europe, not just in Ireland, we may have lost sight of what is required a little by being so correct about how we do things. We have laid huge burdens on the SME sector in particular. As the Deputy rightly stated, SMEs do not have huge human resources departments. They are multitasking, as they have to, and they are very much the backbone of this country. In light of that, we are using our Presidency to ensure we are harnessing competitiveness, including by paring back on the regulatory and bureaucratic burden that has been on businesspeople in this country for a very long time. A key cross-cutting priority will be reducing administrative burdens and improving the business environment and ecosystem. My Department will advance simplification measures to ensure EU rules are proportionate, effective and supportive of enterprise. When we say that, we are not saying that it somehow becomes the Wild West to do business. That is not it. It is about giving that gold stamp of approval to businesses, but also taking away the regulatory burden. "Simplifying" is probably a better word. The Minister, Deputy Burke, is leading the way on all this and established the cost of business advisory forum in June 2025, delivering on a programme for Government commitment. Its purpose is to examine key cost drivers and assess the impact of the rising cost of regulatory pressures on businesses in Ireland. The forum's independent report and recommendations will be presented to the Government and published on 22 July. I thank that committee for its incredible work in respect of that forum. It has been very helpful to us in our Department. These recommendations will aim to help businesses remain competitive and resilient in an increasingly challenging economic environment. The Action Plan on Competitiveness and Productivity was published by the Department in September 2025. It contains 85 actions. Actions are important. We need to consider these not just as recommendations but as actions that we can take as a Government to ensure our competitiveness and productivity performance. The aim behind one of the themes in the plan, "Regulating for Growth and Controlling Costs", is to ensure that the regulatory costs faced by Ireland's businesses are kept to a minimum. The action plan includes measures to support the development of a more effective regulatory system that seeks to support sustainable economic growth while controlling overall cost levels, because we know they have grown exponentially and, in some cases, have got out of control for people trying to stay in business. One such measure is the introduction of the red tape challenge across government to significantly reduce regulation and administrative burden for SMEs, which is incredibly important. Work on the red tape challenge is under way, and progress will be closely monitored. Implementation of the action plan is at an advanced stage. Officials from my Department provided an update on progress at the Competitiveness Summit on 13 July. For priority actions, 65.4% have either been implemented or are on track, while 34.6% are partially implemented and considered in progress. I will let the Deputy come back in. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-15