The small business sector, already under huge pressure due to energy costs, will be the biggest not to benefit from the deregulation of electricity supply, the Small Firms Association (SFA) warned yesterday.
The director of the SFA, Mr Pat Delaney, said there was no point in liberalising the market if few would benefit at a cost to many.
The top 300 companies would be the first - from February - to be free to buy their electricity from whomever they wanted and would be followed in 2003 by a further 1,500 businesses. "This will mean that the biggest market to be excluded will be the small business sector," he said.
In an end-of-year statement, the SFA called from a more strategic approach to the issues affecting small business in the key areas of energy, the labour market, housing, transport and the development of e-commerce.
"It is now time that we moved from merely talking about having the right environment for small business, to putting the needs of small business at the centre of policy making," Mr Delaney said.
He added that the tightness of the labour market was probably the single most important issue facing the sector and a solution to the shortage was crucial to maintaining existing output and to meeting growing demands.
"There is no short-term solution. We know that we've used up our entire skills base. We need, therefore, to take a more flexible approach to the way we work, one which requires more family friendly policies. "Can we find better ways to assist women with young families to take up jobs and can we encourage older people to return to the workplace even on a part-time basis?
"Can we find ways of further decreasing the pool of 160,000 people who are currently drawing unemployment benefit each week, or are we faced with a situation where we're going to have to import labour?"
If labour was to be imported, Mr Delaney added, it would have serious implications for housing policy as labour, accommodation and infrastructure went hand in hand.
"One area that must be examined is the possibility of developing new cities to reflect our growing economic status and growing population. We need to change our mindset in relation to rental accommodation, housing density and the height of buildings that we allow in urban areas."
Mr Delaney said it was vital the investment proposals in the National Development Plan regarding rail networks and public transport were fully met without delay.
Referring to e-commerce, he called for a cut in the VAT rate of 21 per cent which at its existing level would cause huge competitive problems for Irish companies who wished to trade online.
