Ms Julie Sinnamon:

Enterprise Ireland has engaged over the past number of weeks with 2,000 companies and has had fairly significant conversations with them with a view to trying to work out what their funding needs are. This is one of the reasons we brought in the financial planning grant. For many of them, the first step was to work out what their needs were. So far, we have had 17 applications approved for the Sustaining Enterprise Fund, which, as part of that response, and having stabilised the business, is to help with the recovery phase. We have had 510 applications for the financial planning grant. We are working actively with 100 of those to put together applications for support under the Sustaining Enterprise Fund.

That is the level of demand we would have expected at this stage because we know companies are putting together their plans. Over the next few weeks, we would expect that the bulk of those 500-plus applications for financial planning grants will transpire into Sustaining Enterprise Fund funding. That, effectively, allows us to put up to €800,000 into companies to support their liquidity issues.

For some of the smaller companies, we have a fast-track system, which allows them to get up to €50,000. That is manufacturing and internationally traded companies. EI clients and some of the domestically focused companies are very actively engaged with us to help them in that regard.