Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Prior to 2008, schemes of this nature would have been funded through the Department of Defence. When it became evident that it was mainly businesses that were seeking assistance, it was decided that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment would assume responsibility for it.

On the question of whether we need to allocate more money for the scheme, it is generally demand led. The criteria of each scheme is published and then businesses can apply for assistance which is paid out quite quickly to those that qualify. Only for Covid, we would not be having this conversation today because money would have been paid out last year as well.

I sat around the table at an emergency centre during four or five extreme weather events in my previous role as a Minister of State. There were some years when we had quite a lot of such events but thankfully that has not happened in a while. In cases of extreme weather events, the emergency co-ordination centres would have been involved in setting up funds like this but it will not always relate to extreme weather events. That is why the scheme is ad hoc. We simply do not know what the events we will be responding to are, generally. We cannot always assume it will be a certain type of event.

We have had discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform about the need for a permanent scheme but the difficulty would be in determining the amount of money to put in to the pot. If one takes this year, for example, so far we have had no need for the scheme. We are paying out this year because of delays in administering a scheme from previous years. It is felt that it is not always necessary to have a budget sitting there. A budget head is kept open with €1,000 in it and then we can quickly design a scheme to respond to a particular event when it happens. That has been the thinking so far. There have been negotiations involving my Department as well as the Departments of Defence and Public Expenditure and Reform and across the Government on the best way to deal with this in the future. One aspect being explored is the budget and the other aspect is the legal mechanism and how to put it on a statutory footing. That is where the conversation is at right now and I am happy to provide an update to the committee later in the spring as that conversation develops.