Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming over when the technology was not at its best.

During the conversation over the past hour and a half, several issues have come to mind. First, we cannot pre-plan what we will be doing beyond the middle of next year, which creates a difficulty and means we cannot prepare a forecast. We do know what has happened since last March and on what money was spent, however. With the emergency funding which has been put in place and all of the good this has done as a life support for the economy, how do we measure the outcomes and results? Are we getting value for money? Is there a deadweight within what we have done? How are we learning for the next six months of this crisis?

The performing companies are in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, medical devices and computer services. It is the smaller indigenous industries which are on life support at the moment that concern me. They have got supports like the wage subsidy scheme and the restart grants. How sustainable are these? How long can we keep them going? Until we know we will have a vaccine and are on top of Covid, as well as how we are figured out with Brexit, how can we plan next year's budget to support those industries?