This country is made up of a lot of SMEs. In fact, there are 23,000 SMEs that employ between nine to 45 people and a huge number of SMEs that employ larger numbers of people. Especially the smaller ones, in carrying out their day-to-day work, and especially in the groundworks and machinery side of the housing sector, many people have to go to a site to price a job and look after their workers. These are generally small set-ups and they are trying to do their best. They price the job, get the materials, put in the machinery and make sure their workers are looked after by paying wages and so on. Of late, it seems to be getting harder and harder for small businesses to survive. I noted in the past week that even if people have worked for county councils, they cannot get qualified with Irish Water unless they have done three jobs with Irish Water. That is crazy.

To go back to the matter at hand, the subsistence companies or private operators pay people from the country who drive to Dublin or any of the large cities to build houses if they go farther than a certain distance is what we call "country money". Revenue is changing the goalposts. It is not that any of these people ever want to do anything wrong. Now, before subsistence is paid, Revenue has to be informed. That involves more paperwork.

What the Government needs to understand is that these people do not have a dedicated section in their businesses. These are small family businesses where perhaps a husband and wife price the work, look after the employees, deal with the person they are doing the work for and, at night, do paperwork. Now they will be asked to inform Revenue before they give the money. It is visible every six months or year when businesses do their accounts that country money or subsistence was paid. It is there in black and white, but Revenue now wants this to be input every week before it is even paid saying where the employees were and what they were doing. This adds another layer for people who are struggling and who do a lot of work that is not recognised.

On top of that, Revenue has now published a consultative document on VAT. VAT is paid perhaps every two months, but most businesses pay every six months. The consultative document states that every time a customer pays a business, the business will have to tell Revenue that VAT was collected. These people will be constantly on a computer trying to comply with rules and regulations. It will drive people away from setting up small businesses.

Thank you Deputy.

Will the Taoiseach talk to the Ministers and get a bit of common sense into this for the sake of the survival of small businesses?

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I concur with him about the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises. All small businesses together employ more people than the public sector and the entire multinational sector combined. They employ people in every town, village and parish in the country. We appreciate that costs are rising for businesses. That is why the Minister, Deputy Coveney, got approval this week for his €0.25 billion package to help SMEs with rising costs. We also appreciate that the administrative burden for small businesses can be great because they cannot hire as many administrative staff and do not have a HR or accounts department in the way a big company would.

On the specific matter the Deputy raised, the Finance Act 2022 provides for new requirements under which employers must report to Revenue on or before they provide certain non-taxable benefits to their employees or directors. They are the small benefit exemption, the remote working daily allowance and travel and subsistence payments. Employers are already required to determine the tax treatment of such benefits before providing them to their employees or directors. For compliance purposes, they are also required to record and maintain information which supports that determination, for instance demonstrating that the benefit meets the specific conditions of the relevant tax exemption. While the new reporting requirements have not yet been brought into effect, it is intended they will be in place from 1 January.

The period between enactment and commencement is designed to allow sufficient time for Revenue to undertake stakeholder engagement and ensure successful implementation. To date, the stakeholder engagement process has included issuing a survey to employers and their agents, considering submissions from practitioners and representative bodies, developing technical guidance for software providers and scheduling a series of webinars for employers and their agents. Revenue will continue to issue guidance on the reporting requirements and participate in other industry events in the coming months. As with any change in established procedure, there is likely to be a bedding-in period during which stakeholders will need to adapt to the new procedures. I am assured that Revenue has incorporated information gained from stakeholder engagement into the development of the enhanced reporting regime to ensure the mechanisms and processes will not be overly onerous and that employers will have a variety of mechanisms through which they can make their returns.

The Taoiseach said a few words, including "survey". What will a survey do for a small business of four or five people with one or two at the head who are trying to do everything and make sure everything is right? The other word he used was "software". We are back to the same thing. That is grand for a business with a HR department. It will have someone dedicated to that. The Taoiseach mentioned the Minister for trade and enterprise, Deputy Coveney. Yes, certain help is available but at the end of the day the people I am talking about have small businesses with one, two, three, four or five employees who are trying to do everything themselves to survive. Revenue cannot keep putting the likes of this in place. These are the small people who do the groundworks on building sites for the big guys or might do a one-off water main for a county council or for a group water scheme.

These are the small people who do not have a big enough turnover for the procurement set-up that they have to go by now in most aspects of Ireland or they are kicked out. They will not even get on the list of suppliers. What we must remember is these are the people that get up early in the morning and do the bread and butter work to keep Ireland ticking over. What the Finance Act is doing is putting more pressure on these people to the extent that some of them will just say it is not worth it. There are only so many hours in a day and there is only so much they can do and why would they even bother if they are being pushed out of business.

As is often the case when it comes to a new set of rules or a new set of regulations, there can be a bedding-in period. Once they are in place for a few months very often they work well and people's concerns are allayed but that is not always the case, and we have to be flexible and mindful of these things and sometimes make changes if they need to be made. With that in mind, the Department of Finance will continue to monitor this matter as Revenue continues to engage with stakeholders.

As it currently stands, there are no plans to deviate from the commencement of the enhanced reporting requirements from 1 January. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, who is sitting beside me here, has a particular remit for business and is aware of the matter, as is the Minister for Finance, Deputy McGrath, and we will certainly monitor the situation and make sure that this happens as seamlessly as possible.