Ireland 13th in The World Bank 2015 Doing Business Report

The World Bank 2015 Doing Business Report which shows that Ireland’s overall doing business ranking has moved four places up to 13th this year. This report ranks Ireland as 2nd in the Eurozone and 5th in the EU overall behind Denmark, the UK, Finland and Sweden. Ireland is also amongst the top 10 counties in terms of the improvements achieved since last year; no other OECD or EU country made the best improvers list.

The World Bank's Doing Business project looks at domestic, primarily small and medium size companies and measures the regulations applying to them through their life cycle. It presents quantitative indicators on business regulation that can be compared across economies and over time.

Doing Business goes beyond identifying that a problem exists and points to specific regulations or regulatory procedures that may lend themselves to reform.

However, there are certain indicators in which there is much room for improvement. Ireland is quite far behind the leaders in dealing with construction permits (115th), getting electricity (100th), registering property (57th) and enforcing contracts (62nd).

In response to the World Bank's Doing Business Report, the Government has put a process in place to ensure that

(i) all of the information captured by the World Bank is accurate and timely;

(ii) recent reforms to Irish regulations to enhance the ease of doing business are reflected in the index; and

(iii) relevant Government departments identity and implement reforms to improve Ireland's performance.

In addition, to continue the progress towards making Ireland the best small country to do businesses and to improve the ease of doing business, individual Government Departments have identified more than 50 specific actions which are currently in train, or which could be taken before the end of 2015, to make it easier for enterprises to transact their business with public bodies. The actions relate to headings such as streamlining administrative procedures; using technology to reduce the administrative burden; starting a business; reducing transaction costs; settling legal disputes; participation in public procurement.

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD is engaged in a continuous process of reducing the timelines and burdens for starting and running a business.

Initiatives include enabling electronic filing of returns to the Companies Registration Office, with 82% of all Annual Returns e-filed in 2013, introducing measures to make examinership procedures less costly, making it easier to apply for an audit exemption, introducing a range of innovations though our overhaul of the Companies Acts, reducing processing times for employment permits, our Workplace Relations Reforms and improving communications with businesses through our 'Taking Care of Business' fora.

Since the launch of the Action Plan for Jobs, over 70,000 jobs have been created across the country and the live register has dropped from a high of 15.1% to 11.1%.

The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD, is currently working on Action Plan for Jobs 2015 and the Government is focused on further improving the business environment to ensure that Ireland is the best small country in the world to do business. Our ranking as 13th out of 189 countries in the Doing Business Report will assist in this goal.