Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With respect, Britain has a wage subsidy scheme amounting to 80%. Britain has waived rates not for three months, as we have done here, but for nine months. In the North, an SME in the most-affected sector has grant support available up to £25,000. Here, the figure is €10,000 at most. For all other SMEs in the North the figure is £10,000, whereas here a company gets as little as €2,000. Is the proof not in the pudding in the fact that so little has been drawn down under these schemes? Let me deal with the working capital loan scheme, which is one of the most successful by drawdown so far. The conditions are so difficult to reach that many companies simply cannot reach the mark. A company can pick any one of these to qualify. One requires that 80% of the loan scheme is spent on research and innovation. That is not where companies are at this point. They simply want to survive. A company must intend to enter a new product in a geographical market. A company must have registered a technology in the past 24 months. An SME must have research and innovation costs of at least 10%. The list goes on and on. The company must have used the loan to produce, develop or implement new or substantially improved products or it must be a fast-growing enterprise. Basically, many companies looking for working capital grants at this point need funding to put in place measures for social distancing, for example. They cannot avail of this scheme. That is why so little money is being drawn down from these schemes. Is that not the case?