Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Has the Government made a formal request for that to be done? Whether there is a hard or soft Brexit, I am concerned about the gap between 29 March and the point when funding will be available on the necessary scale, particularly in the regions which may face a downturn, as the Minister noted. I am afraid that during that gap many businesses will go to the wall. That is why I think we should be front-loading some of these schemes. I refer to schemes that small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, can access without much bureaucracy. There is a fear that while some loans and supports are available, they are not available on the scale that we need. Moreover, the derogations from the state aid rules need to be maximised at this stage. Regardless of what kind of Brexit we end up with, front-loading those projects would help to mitigate some of the consequences.