By Business & Finance 
Aidan Sweeney, senior policy executive Ibec; Mark Cunningham, managing director, Business Banking; Ed Butler, managing partner; David Williams, head of Financial Services, LK Shields
Irish businesses argue that the administrative burden of red tape is an obstacle to recruitment, growth and innovation.
LK Shields Red Tape Survey reports that one in three companies say red tape is an obstacle to growth. Some 56% of respondents to the survey said compliance costs are increasing faster than business growth and 85% think the cost burden needs to be reduced.
The new research, carried out among 300 Irish businesses of all sizes, assesses the burden that red tape places on Irish businesses across all sectors and seeks to gain a greater understanding of how compliance and regulation affects the Irish business market.
According to David Williams, head of Financial Services at corporate law firm LK Shields: “As advisors to leading Irish companies, we see first-hand the burden red tape places on businesses of all sizes in Ireland. We acknowledge and support the necessity of robust regulation in all business sectors, but we also firmly believe that much greater efficiencies can be achieved without letting regulatory standards slip, particularly when it comes to the administrative burden of compliance. Our Red Tape Survey will hopefully spark much-needed debate and action to resolve the issues highlighted.”
The 2015 Red Tape Survey focused on large and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) across all sectors in Ireland, including the service, retail, finance, manufacturing and construction industries. Over 80% of businesses surveyed employ between 25-99 people, while 9% employ 100-249 and 8% employ more than 250 people.
Of the businesses with 25-99 employees, only 22% state that Ireland’s regulatory environment is more attractive than overseas markets, while that figure rises to 39% of businesses with over 100 employees.
Also commenting on the research, Aidan Sweeney, senior policy executive at Ibec, said: “There is unnecessary regulatory and administrative costs to conducting business in Ireland. The European Commission has estimated that the cost of regulation on the Irish economy is equivalent to 2.4% of GDP – or €4.5bn per annum.
“We are calling on policy makers to introduce concrete priorities in the next programme for Government, including the introduction of a new national legislation database to track development of all new initiatives through the policy making stages.”
