Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this legislation. I will confine my words in the main to section 5 of the Bill, which amends sections 100 and 101 of the Finance Act 2022. The sections in question provide for the TBESS, which was announced as a flagship support for SMEs in budget 2023. The escalating energy crisis posed a direct threat to the viability of many small businesses and, as such, a scheme was needed to help to guide them through this crisis in the hope that the situation would stabilise in time. It was clear once the scheme went live that there were interlinked problems caused by the qualifying threshold being too high and the relief too low, as well as the exclusion of businesses depending on LPG and oil. As a result, SMEs and microbusinesses struggled to access the scheme and many were excluded from it. This was evidenced by a low take-up by businesses of the €1.2 billion support scheme. According to figures published by Revenue, as of 9 March €56 million had been approved under the scheme, with €49 million in claims paid out. It is welcome that the Government realised the scheme was not working and brought forward changes in line with what Sinn Féin and others had called for. However, the lowering of the threshold, the increase of the relief rates and the raising of the payment limits have to ensure the support fund achieves its aim of providing much-needed assistance to SMEs and microbusinesses that are struggling with energy costs.

There are additional structural issues which also need to be addressed. Businesses have said that the application process is too convoluted. The guidelines explaining the scheme run to over 100 pages and the process itself takes hours and often necessitates paying for an accountant. If a person has to pay for an accountant and is already struggling to pay his or her bills, it is clear how this would add additional pressure. These structural difficulties have not been addressed. I urge the Minister of State to speak to small businesses, as well as business groups like ISME, the Family Business Network and the Small Firms Association, about how the process can be simplified and shortened.

I note the senior Minister, who is not with us anymore, mentioned in his speech:

.... a separate scheme will be considered for businesses that use oil and liquefied petroleum gas, LPG. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment has committed to exploring options for such a scheme and to revert to the Government on this matter in due course.

Nothing urgent is coming out of that at all. The Government is saying that it might do something in the future at some unspecified stage. This issue has been raised by Sinn Féin and others for months. The Minister is well aware that there are people who are excluded from the scheme and businesses that may fail because they are excluded from this scheme, yet there is an utterly nonchalant approach from the Government to a serious matter. I ask the Minister of State to clarify how long "in due course" is. Businesses need to know and want to understand what "in due course" means and when they can expect that time to have run out.

We have tried to encourage the Government to have empathy, sympathy or indeed a small amount of understanding of what people are facing as a direct result of the housing crisis created by the Government's policies. The Government is not listening to that. Perhaps it will listen to powerful lobbies like the business lobby. IBEC, Chambers Ireland and others say that the housing crisis created on the watch of this previous Government and not addressed on the watch of this Government is impacting not just their capacity to attract staff but also their capacity to retain staff. It is hurting our competitiveness and businesses' capacity to do business. They cannot recruit workers because they cannot find anywhere to live. Perhaps if the Government is not minded to be empathetic or sympathetic, it might look at the bottom line and the fact that its housing crisis is starting to impact on the productivity of this State. Perhaps that might spur it to do something about it.

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