Mr. Declan Hughes:

It is intended to help businesses cover their costs and provide direct support to them. It is a successor to the restart grant, which was a direct grant.

I thank Deputy O'Reilly for the question on the credit guarantee scheme. The scheme was launched in early September. It was announced as part of the July stimulus package. It did require a couple of steps in order to go through; the first was legislation and the second was approval at EU level from a state aid perspective, all of which was achieved in very quick order during August and it was launched in early September with the three pillar banks. There has been very significant interest in it. I can report that, as of last Friday, 1,200 application had been recommended by the banks to their credit departments. They had gone through all of the initial stages and they were in the final stages of being approved to a value of approximately €64 million. What was reported was the amount for the previous weeks in terms of what was actually drawn down in terms of the €6 million, but we would expect that to increase significantly.