Mr. John McGrane:

I take Senator Byrne's second question on a post-Covid-19 and post-Brexit environment, which please God will be soon. We have a very simple view. The recovery can only be jobs-led. There is no recovery in community without employment. Members do not need us to tell them the shocking statistics on job loss. Indeed, we are always first to call out our appreciation, on behalf of businesses, of the extraordinary levels of support being given to businesses, employers and citizens by the Irish Government and its officials.

Equally, we are extraordinarily conscious that this cannot be sustained indefinitely, to say the very least. It was interesting that last week Ireland got a very approving analysis from the International Money Fund, IMF, for instance. It was very understanding of Ireland’s very particular circumstances. We are not unique, but we have particular circumstances and the IMF identified some of those exposures.

Taking the Senator’s point about how businesses on this island and in this country can get back to their pre-crises condition, the reality is that the foreign direct investment sector, which we greatly appreciate, may not create the same sort of job content as before the pandemic. The reality is behind my office on Merrion Square, where Twitter built a new building about two years ago. It is being literally topped out as we speak, now that construction is back. It is probably not going to be occupied by Twitter, because Twitter basically told its staff that they are not necessarily going to be coming back to the office. Google, as members know, which is around the corner from me on Macken Street, has basically cancelled a deal to place 2,000 staff into what was then Ireland’s largest new office building.

The reality is that a jobs-led recovery is probably not going to be led by the foreign direct investment sector. It is going to be led by indigenous, Ireland-based, Irish-owned and many family-owned, businesses. These are not just in major urban centres, but very importantly to the fabric of our country and of our communities, they are literally in every parish and in every constituency of the country. Those companies have appreciated very much the supports of schemes like the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, the temporary Covid-19 wage subsidy scheme, TWSS, and the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS. Indeed, employees have benefited from the pandemic unemployment scheme, PUP, and other supports. However, it would be easy to think that now that they will be back in business on some future date - please God this autumn - that they can begin to somehow contribute to the costs of all that, just overnight. That could not be further from the truth. The worst thing that we could do would be to enable businesses to get back in business, to recreate lost jobs and then stymie them in any way from achieving their fullest potential.

We absolutely want to promote and to be at the table to discuss a form of tapering resumption of some kind of normal. Ideally, this would the volume of jobs that we had, certainly before Brexit, and definitely before the pandemic. Ireland was doing very well in job creation. Much of that was done quietly, much more quietly than in the foreign direct investment sector. It was being promoted by businesses - the plain businesses of Ireland - the length and breadth of every constituency in the country, which were quietly going about their business, growing and creating community in that circular community economy. An employer creates a job, creates wages, creates spending on VAT and excise in the community and creates well-being for an entire household and the furtherance of the circular economy in that way. What we believe would be the very best outcome - and indeed should be the only outcome - is that we think about recreating jobs and allowing businesses time to respond to the resumption. Then we should figure out nationally, rather than factionally, how the extraordinary costs of what we have had to endure need to be to be taken care of. Then everybody can play their part in a fair way.