The first phase of the project involved identifying the interactions that businesses are required to undertake in the course of meeting import and export regulatory requirements, as well as the ‘ongoing’ interactions required to meet general regulatory requirements e.g. health and safety, statistical reporting, security, licenses etc. These requirements can be information obligations, i.e. obligations arising from regulation to provide information and data to the public sector or third parties or content obligations, i.e. legal requirements stipulating that businesses have to carry out or avoid certain actions or conducts.The requirements were identified through research, data gathering and face-to-face interviews with businesses. Afterwards, they were mapped diagrammatically and broken down into their individual components. This information was entered into an excel sheet, which was used to include all data from the measurement.
The second phase of the project involved quantifying the costs of the identified requirements using the Standard Cost Model. First, the number of times per year that the different requirements were performed was identified. Then, businesses were interviewed in order to arrive at standardized costs for each requirement. Finally, a report was drawn up and presented to Forfás. Subsequently, training was provided to an inter-Departmental group involved in the Administrative Burden reduction exercise.
Ireland, Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment 2008.
