Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have spoken previously on the need not to add an additional burden of debt by way of loans. Mr. Moran said that somebody needs to do modelling in respect of understanding the debt and what needs to happen. Who should that be?

On institutional landlords, for example, it would be a very short-term approach not to deal with this in a sensitive way, because we will have a very high level of vacancy if that is the case, which obviously has a knock-on consequence. It cannot be left to individual businesses. What is happening collectively, if anything, that will aid businesses to deal with that component? Some people will come out of this relatively unscathed and some of the burden must be shared. For example, there will be premises that will have been closed for three months, but they will have a phone bill with a standing charge, and if it is left unpaid, the service will be cut off. It is that kind of thing where there must be some degree of fairness in terms of sharing the burden. If we were to tot up all of the demands or calls on the public purse, we would be very dishonest to say that they can all be met. Even though a stimulus package is the way out of this, there are sectors that have been greatly damaged and will take a long time to recover. Will Mr. Moran deal specifically with the issues of who will do the modelling and what is happening collectively about dealing with organisations like landlords who are institutional investors and about utility and other charges where there should be a sharing of the burden?