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

Deputy Stanton makes a good point about the content that is posted online. There is a criminal justice element to this. I do not know whether there are protocols that Internet platforms follow and whether they simply take this content down or report it to the authorities in the relevant country. I will check that because one would think they would have a responsibility in that regard.

The Deputy will be aware that the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, is working on the online safety legislation and the creation of an online safety commissioner, which is long overdue. There should be a protocol for the platforms to report potentially illegal content to the relevant authorities, but it is the world wide web and that is not easily done.

On the small business assistance scheme for Covid, SBASC, we anticipate that will open for applications on Friday. However, just in case something goes wrong, I will say that, officially, it will open next week. If all goes to plan, however, it will open on Friday and will be run through the local authorities. The closing date for applications will be 21 July, so businesses have a decent amount of time to make their application. The scheme applies to any business that had a turnover in excess of €50,000 a year and whose turnover has declined by 75% or more. These businesses can get a grant of €4,000 to help with their costs. It is no longer limited to rateable premises, so it includes non-rateable premises and people working from home or a hot desk.

Many people would have heard about the needs of wedding planners, photographers, travel counsellors and on-course bookmakers. They would largely be covered by this scheme. I recognise there is an issue with very small businesses with a turnover of less than €50,000. In order to help them out, we are reopening an old scheme called the micro-enterprise assistance scheme. That will give very small businesses a grant of up to €1,000 to help with their costs. That will be run through local enterprise offices, LEOs. Separate from that, the Minister, Deputy Martin, and I are working on something for the events sector, which is still in real difficulty.

What we expect to do from quarter 3, starting in July, is to move away from different sectoral supports to something that is across the board. We brought in the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, and the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, which are great but had many gaps. We then created about ten or 20 different schemes to fill those gaps. Ideally, what we will do from July onwards is to have a single scheme that fits all firms. However, as we all know, one size does not fill all, so we will probably find we will have the same problem again. Hopefully, this will not be an issue because businesses will be open and trading. It should not be as big an issue as it is now in any event.

On Aer Lingus, yesterday's news was extremely unwelcome.

I met representatives of Aer Lingus in the last couple of weeks. I was aware that the company planned to do some restructuring but it did not give us any details. Understandably, it has to give those to its employees first. The closure of the cabin crew base in Shannon was not expected. It is down to the pandemic and the fact that people are just not travelling. It is also down to the restrictions the Government imposed. It would be remiss of me not to point out that there are many Members of the Oireachtas who still do not believe those restrictions went far enough. The decision would have been even worse had we gone along with the calls made by some Members.

Aer Lingus and the other airlines are receiving very substantial support, millions of euro, every week through the wage subsidy scheme. Airports have also received financial support. There is no shortage of money going into aviation from government. I believe it is in the hundreds of millions of euro at this stage. We have had conversations with airlines about paying them to keep certain strategic routes open but that is not something they are particularly interested in, aside from the fact that this would run into state aid rules and competition rules. They want to fly their aeroplanes with passengers on them. They do not want to be paid to fly empty planes. We are not New Zealand or Qantas. In the real world, aeroplanes can be moved out of Ireland very easily to places like Manchester. That is one of the consequences of the very strict travel restrictions we have in Ireland.

I do not regret imposing those restrictions, by the way. We have one of the lowest death rates per million population in Europe. Only Finland and Denmark have seen fewer deaths per million than Ireland, and some of that is down to our very strict travel rules and the fact that we are an island. However, they have real consequences for real people, including not being able to see families and friends who live abroad and the loss of jobs in tourism and aviation. The sooner we can get back to flying, the better. However, we still stand the risk of reseeding the virus into Ireland and bringing in variants and we cannot ignore that risk. There is real concern around the Indian variants in particular coming from the UK and we have to keep a close eye on that.

I will have to pass on the driver test issues and small public service vehicles. I could give the Deputy an answer but it would probably be wrong. I will ask the Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, to get in touch with him on that.