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

Just to give an idea of budgets, the budget for this year is just over €6 million and that will increase to €6.3 million next year.

In terms of what we have planned for staffing levels, the current complement for the ODCE is just under 47 staff. We would plan to increase that and scale it up to 69 so quite a big increase. On the civilian side, that is going from 39.8 staff to 52.8 staff and, on the Garda side, it is going from eight staff to 16 staff. One cannot just double or treble these things overnight. If one wants to do it properly one must scale up an organisation but that is the plan for scaling up. So it is a significant scaling up in resources - a doubling of the number of gardaí and increasing the number of civilian staff from fewer than 40 to 52 staff - and we will take it from there. I see this body as growing, developing and becoming more resourced as time goes on.

On financial support for business, as the Senator will know, we have the wage subsidy scheme that helps the payroll and the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, which helps with mixed costs. The plan was to start phasing that out at the end of March because we had thought that whatever third wave might arise in January would be much less than what we have experienced. I think the picture is now very different and we need to be frank about that. I chair the committee on the economy. We are going to convene that next week because I think we need to take an early decision, as a Government, to extend the wage subsidy scheme and the CRSS really well into the second quarter if not until the end of the second quarter. Even if businesses do re-open in the second quarter they will not all re-open and they are still going to need that additional financial support. All of this is very expensive but, I think, the cost of allowing these companies to fail would be greater than the cost of trying to keep them alive. We will have a Cabinet committee meeting on that next week. I want to be in a position to give businesses an early indication of a decision on this so they know in February what is going to happen at the end of March, not in March what is going to happen at the end of March.

On the examinership question, the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, is leading on that so I might hand over to him.