IBEC has renewed its calls for Irish voters to support parties with "pro-business" policies on Friday week when the country goes to the polls.

Speaking to Business Breakfast, Danny McCoy, CEO of IBEC said that a number of Left-leaning parties are running on "anti-business" platforms.

"If you look across the spectrum, the mainstream parties are pro-enterprise. Our main concern is that, given the instability that may come post-election. Some of the populism that is being advanced, certainly from the Left, with their policies and ideologies which are anti-business, could infect the new programme for government," Mr McCoy said.

"I think that would be a really bad mistake. We need to have a competitive economy. We need business to thrive. We need an ideology that is supportive towards that," he continued.

The leader of the business group said that tax cuts and spending increases promised in election manifestos read as if they were written in late 2015 - before the onset of the severe market instability which has characterised the opening weeks of 2016, and China's slowdown which could affect Irish trade.

The IBEC boss also said that measures like the proposed introduction of a sugar tax cannot raise sufficient revenue to replace money lost by abolishing the USC.

The group favours cuts to income tax rates over the abolition of the USC as it argues that Ireland should not narrow its tax base.