Mr. Paul Kelly:

We have seen a small number of insolvencies to date. We are key accounting hundreds of businesses around the country and providing business mentoring and financial support.

Through those engagements and through our engagements with some of the leading accountancy agencies, we are seeing more and more of those businesses teetering on the brink and which are likely, in the first half of next year, to have difficulty returning a set of accounts that would classify them as a viable going concern. When the July stimulus and the budget were done, the outlook for the tourism and hospitality business was probably more positive than now, given the level 5 restrictions we have had for the past six weeks. While it is great that intercounty travel will be open for three weeks at a key time and one that is good for safety, those restrictions are probably tighter than was envisaged at the time.

We have spoken about the CRSS. Regarding how banks are approaching businesses now, the moratorium, which was absolutely vital for survival, ended in October. It is still relatively early days since that ended but we are now getting to hear back how banks are treating tourism and hospitality businesses on a case-by-case basis. Whereas in some instances we are hearing of banks being supportive and flexible, we are also hearing of cases where banks are demanding full capital and interest repayments in line with a normal schedule as if business was ongoing. That is clearly unsustainable when businesses cannot trade and cannot get any revenue. We do not have enough evidence to call anybody out individually yet, but we are hearing of some cases, which we will be monitoring and following up as appropriate. The support from banks will be essential.

The Government-supported schemes through the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, have very low applicability and uptake in tourism businesses. They are not helping the tourism sector to any material extent. Only a handful of businesses in the tourism sector have been able to access those. It is not that the Government does not want the money to go there but because of the process and the involvement of banks, the money is not going into tourism businesses. For businesses to be able to refinance and restructure their debt, as Mr. Gibbons said, the recovery will not come immediately and there will be a period before we can build back up to the types of business levels we thought we would have. It will be critical to find a mechanism to help businesses restructure their financing.