Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Covid-19 life sciences products scheme gives IE and the IDA money, essentially, to either encourage foreign direct investment to develop in Ireland and make products that will be helpful when it comes to Covid-19, or for EI to do the reverse with indigenous products. It was always envisaged there would be a pipeline. The money was only announced in the past few months. It is really next year that we expect the big drawdown to happen because there is a pipeline in terms of those investments actually happening. It is, however, one of the areas where EU state aid rules have been relaxed and we want to grab the opportunity so that other countries do not get ahead of us.

There is a customs fund of €8,000 for companies to take on staff for customs. There has been a low uptake and I am a little worried about that, quite frankly. I would like to believe it indicates that companies are ready for customs on 1 January. I am, however, a bit sceptical that is the case. We have written to every company, produced advice and there will be TV advertisements next week. The financial support is there. I will say to companies again that free trade agreement or no free trade agreement, business will change on 1 January and they need to be ready for that.

On the Covid-19 guarantee scheme, as of last Friday, more than 2,000 applications had been progressed to credit departments and 920 loans had been sanctioned to the value of €122 million so there is still a significant amount to be drawn down. Much of it is due to a lack of appetite among businesses to borrow at the moment. Most small businesses have no debt. Whether they do or not, however, there is not a large appetite to take on debt because of the uncertainty about the future. I still believe, however, it is important the facility is there.