Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will get back to the Deputy on insurance for the outdoor dining scheme. As he will be aware, it is €500 million for outdoor seating accessories for tourism and hospitality and €12 million for the local authority structures. I will get back to the Deputy with a note on that insurance query.

The charter boat operators were invited to apply for the first stage of that €55 million tourism business continuity scheme. I know some operators are disappointed that they were found ineligible because they did not have a minimum annual turnover, as the Deputy said, of €50,000. The rationale for this requirement is that the focus of the tourism business continuity scheme is to support strategic tourism businesses to offset fixed costs incurred in 2020 and support them to continue operating in 2021. That eligibility criteria for the €50,000 threshold is based on the likelihood that for a business with a turnover of less than €50,000, the non-payroll fixed costs will be sufficiently low to enable the owners to furlough the business by availing of other state aids, namely, income supports such as the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, thereby enabling these businesses to re-emerge as public health restrictions ease.