Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Bambrick. SMEs have warehoused about €1 billion in debt, a very scary figure, although much of it relates to the advance credit for trading expenses and so on. My fear, and I am interested in hearing Mr. McDonnell's view on this, is that much of the debt relates to rent. There are viable, good, decent businesses that could restart, but the issue with them relates not so much to the debt but rather to the back rent that will impede them. Does Mr. McDonnell have any information on the numbers in that regard or what the potential impact of that will be? For some businesses, we cannot know because they are not yet open, although we will when they pull up the shutters and the bills start to arrive. My fear is that the shutters will go up, there will be six weeks of trading and they will be forced to go, and rent makes up a considerable part of that. I cannot count the number of occasions on which I have raised this with the Tánaiste. There does not seem to be any movement on that but I would be interested in hearing Mr. McDonnell's comments.