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Open letter to all candidates

Will your party do anything to reform the following for small business?

It is becoming more and more expensive to set up a sole trader in Ireland. One of the main barriers is the cost of employment. Up until 2012 there was a statutory redundancy rebate of up to 60% paid by the state towards redundancy. I know this is not feasible for the state to provide to for large companies but for small one to ten micro businesses it is not feasible for them to pay the same redundancy as company employing a thousand people.

Another issue with statutory redundancy rebate, if you are sole trader, the sole trader is liable for the redundancy from their personal finances, a limited company can apply for a liquidation and get the Department of Employment Affairs and Social protection Social Insurance Fund to pay the costs of redudancy. This option is not open to a sole trader unless they claim bankruptcy. Is it fair to a sole trader to pay redundancy costs from their personal finances?

Does your party have any plans to reintroduce the statutory redundancy rebate to small business owners and allow a struggling sole trader to apply for help towards redundancy costs from the Social Insurance Fund?

The Companies acts were updated in 2014 and 2017, one thing it did for small micro companies is, if they miss a deadline they must either go to court or be subject to the same audit rules as company with a turnover of over EUR 12 million and up to 50 employees for two years. https://www.cro.ie/About-CRO/Latest-News/ArtMID/1567/ArticleID/1248/Audit-Exemption-rule-change

In the UK if a company misses a deadline, it just pays a fine, there is no need to go court or engage an auditor. https://www.gov.uk/annual-accounts/penalties-for-late-filing.

Would you consider voting and changing the law to only impose reasonable fines on micro and small companies and remove the requirement of audits and going to court for companies that miss their filing deadlines?

VAT registration threshold at EUR 37,500 has not changed in years. VAT returns cause a lot of paper work and expense for small businesses, in the UK they increased the VAT registration threshold to GBP £ 85,000 https://www.gov.uk/vat-registration-thresholds.

Does your party have any plans to increase the VAT registration threshold to the same as the UK?

Cost of housing.

The average price of rent is now EUR 2,000, the average net wage is EUR 2,958. This is not sustainable and the rents are just going up and up and homelessness is on the rise.

What are you going to do drastically increase the amount of apartments and two unit housing available for rent in Dublin and surrounding areas and reduce the rent being charged?