The Irish SME Association has criticised the Government's response to the coronavirus pandemic and accused it of being "fixated" on multinationals.
ISME says the reopening has been "ponderously slow" and any further delays would be disastrous. In his opening statement for today's sitting of the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19, ISME CEO Neil McDonnell says that missteps with the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and the Wage Subsidy Scheme could have been avoided if there was a formal liaison with small business.
The association says SMEs continue to be a blind spot and the perception at the upper levels is that big corporations pay their taxes while small business owners fiddle their expenses.