Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 November 2021

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes

9:30 am

Dr. Orlaigh Quinn:

I thank the Deputy for his comments. When we were designing these schemes and reviewing them, members of the committee and, in particular, the Oireachtas gave us great feedback and helped us on the way there. I want to acknowledge that.

We keep Covid on our management board agenda on a weekly basis. Every scheme is under review. We will obviously look at all contingencies as they develop. That is obviously working right across Government. I am on the Covid oversight group, and we work closely with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Many of our schemes are still available to companies. In fact, all of our loan schemes are still there. We are still working. We are looking to extend some of the schemes where we can. Some of them are part of our EU funding requirements and, again, we keep them under review. I would say to the Deputy that absolutely everything remains open to us in how we respond. I take his point. Covid has certainly had an impact, and we are looking at some challenges for certain sectors. Some of them come in under the hospitality sector and, again, we will continue to support our colleagues in the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media on that.

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