We believe that the key to fostering employment recovery is the recovery of our small-to-medium enterprise sector. This sector employs more than 70% of all employees and has been particularly badly affected in the downturn.

We need to get investment flowing into this sector. Members of this committee know better than most the difficulties of the banking sector, and hence the lack of capital flowing into Irish business.

There is an understandable reluctance given the experience of property reliefs in the last decade for the continued use of tax reliefs to drive behavior ^{behaviour 也是可以的} in our economy.

We believe, however, that there still is a role for carefully targeted and managed tax reliefs and accordingly have made recommendations for tax reliefs in key areas.

One is to make it more attractive for Irish investors to invest in Irish companies, rather than leave money in less economically productive investments.

Secondly, make it cost-effective to employers to retain key employees who contribute to innovation in their business.