PLATFORM:DEAR SANTA, You must be surprised to receive this letter from me after 50 years of my not writing. I know I didn't thank you after the very last gift you gave, but let me say that the toy fire engine was great. I still have it in the attic somewhere.

I'm writing now because Irish business is struggling this year and I thought you could help. My cousin is a banker and he doesn't even believe in you, but he's getting such a lovely gift that I thought I couldn't go wrong by putting pen to paper and asking for some modest help from you.

Firstly, there is Eoin. He is a pig-farmer in Wexford and his business was already suffering from low prices this autumn, but that got a lot worse two weeks ago when some dioxins were discovered in Irish pork.

The damage this has done goes far beyond the immediate cost of the recall. Good reputations take years to establish, but bad reputations can take decades to overturn, especially when it involves the produce of a foreign country. You and the elves may not drink bottled water, but sales of Perrier have still not recovered from a benzene scare that happened almost 20 years ago.

So Santa, please treble the number of FSAI food inspectors as a gift to Eoin. There had been no inspection of the pig feed plant in question for more than a year. The FSAI is to be commended for announcing a full recall, but this one-year gap in inspections is far too long.

And Santa, if your elves have any experience in chemical or biological engineering, we could also urgently use a massive investment in the technology that can create cheap, rapid and on-site (or close to site) tests for dioxins and other contaminants, which can then be distributed so widely that no meat product can ever leave these shores without being tested.

If you do this, Eoin's farmer friends promise not to block future reform of European agriculture subsidies, which make shoppers across Europe pay more for their groceries. A reputation for Ireland as obsessive screeners of meat hygiene will allow us to command a premium for our food even if those trade restrictions are withdrawn.

Santa, Mary has also had a hard time of it recently. She runs a small clothes shop in Dundalk that employs three people, and she also runs a small one-person business designing and making dresses. During the boom years, she struggled to restock the racks quickly enough, but sales have slumped in the past three months.

Everyone is worried about their jobs and, in this environment, nobody wants to spend money on a new hat or pair of shoes. She has already laid off one of her employees and may have to let another one go after Christmas. Even worse, with sterling falling, she is haemorrhaging customers to Northern Ireland.

Santa, the modest cuts in VAT such as those that have been made in the UK are hardly enough to encourage shoppers to spend, but there is something you could do for VAT in Ireland. Could you please extend the VAT payment deadline for small businesses to 90 or even 120 days? Businesses would eventually have to pay VAT to the exchequer, of course, but this would act as an extra measure of liquidity for companies in the short term, giving them breathing room.

This would be a help for all small businesses, not only Mary's, because companies are increasingly taking longer to pay their suppliers, many of whom are small businesses, and are thus caught in a cash squeeze between delayed payments for goods but an unchanged timetable for VAT payments.

In return, Mary promises that she will never take a higher profit margin on her goods than her competitors across the Border in the North. Irish retailers are already disadvantaged by higher rents and being charged more for the same wholesale goods than retailers in the UK, but customers in the Republic deserve to be assured that nobody is unjustly profiting at their expense.

Finally Santa, there is Cathal, a publican. You might think that, in economic times like these, we would all be queuing three deep at the bar to drown our sorrows but it's not quite like that. In the past eight years, alcohol consumption has dropped by 7 per cent in Ireland, and the drink we do buy is increasingly being bought in off-licences and supermarkets. This has led to 1,500 pubs closing in that time.

Santa, would you please fill your sleigh up with some large catering equipment to refit pub kitchens? Or at least get the elves to knock out some aggressive depreciation rates on investment in catering equipment in pubs.

This would encourage publicans to make their pubs more family-friendly and increase the percentage of sales they make on food. In Britain, where pubs are also suffering, the only ones that are increasing sales are doing it by moving away from the "wet led" model of relying on alcohol and moving toward food sales.

Oh and Santa, please could you get the elves to bring some more brewing equipment? More publicans could take advantage of the increased appetite for microbrewed beers (which continue to take market share from lager) by making the stuff themselves, and they would, of course, benefit from the tax treatment of microbreweries.

In return, the publicans will promise to encourage responsible drinking by slashing the often egregious prices they charge for soft drinks that makes it cheaper to drink beer than orange juice. They will also promise not to roll their eyes at busy times in the bar when customers order something complicated like a hot port or an Irish coffee!

So there you are Santa. I know that's a lot to fit in the sleigh, but I hear Rudolf has been hitting the gym this year, so he should be able to manage it. If you could bring those things, Eoin, Mary and Cathal would be very happy, and I promise they would get longer use out of them than I did from the fire engine.

Feargal Quinn is an independent member of Seanad Éireann and chairman of EuroCommerce