Mr. Neil McDonnell:

Quite a bit of ground was covered there. The no-notice extension of the grace period was viewed as a stay of execution by many businesses. We know the rules are going to change but we would appreciate some certainty on when that is going to happen.

On the trade figures, given today's focus, my emphasis was on the import side but Irish SMEs are also disproportionately dependent on the UK on the export side. Small businesses in the Republic exporting will go to Northern Ireland first, and GB second. The trade patterns for large companies are much more east-west. I would have to check the figures but the United States is as big as Europe. Our big businesses export more to the Continent than to the UK. It is our sector which is disproportionately affected here. It is difficult to generalise but the types of trade in which they are engaged are characterised by lower margins. If costs of administration, distribution and transport etc. are altered by a few percent, that can alter the viability of certain trades.

On Covid supports, I refer the committee to the article in the newspapers last week about the EU figures on state supports. Our employee and unemployment supports are relatively good in the Republic, but our direct supports to business are the lowest in the EU. We are below Croatia. If we correct for the GDP factor, we still do not get higher than the lowest state supports in the EU, which are in Croatia. This is where confidence and sentiment come into play. We heard much talk last week of the lockdown being extended. A huge amount of what people are going to do in terms of spending decisions, holidaying at home decisions and so on are based on what they see happening in the economy. If the Government does not provide for a structured easing of the lockdown and set targets for getting to level 4 and then level 3 once we reach certain infection rates per 100,000, substantial sectors of the SME demography are not going to survive. I echo Ms Curran's point that we are going to need direct supports to business in addition to the wage supports to employees and supports for the unemployed. Otherwise, there will be a significant amount of mortality in the SME sector.