Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I differ strongly from Deputy Nash in one respect. He referred to the transfer of public money into private hands but that was done with the purpose of keeping people in work. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have a job today who would not have one without the EWSS. In fairness to Deputy Nash and the Labour Party, they have recognised that by their support for the legislation. Deputy Nash has acknowledged this at other points. However, the description of it as a transfer of public money into private hands needs to be completed with an acknowledgement that it has worked in keeping people in jobs. When we put the various schemes in place, it was with the reasonable anticipation of very low levels of profitability occurring during a pandemic. It is an open question as to whether it would be appropriate to put in place further conditionality at a time in which the very viability of employers was threatened.

I wish to make two concluding points on this topic. If a company is profitable enough to make a dividend payment but we put in place a restriction to say that when a company is participating in the EWSS, it cannot pay that dividend, then the profit will just stay on the company's balance sheet. When the company exits the EWSS, a dividend will be paid at that point. If we are going to have a debate about dividend payments, we must also have a bigger debate about what kind of profit, if any, an employer should make when on the EWSS. Finally, for employers that have got through the pandemic and are about to exit the EWSS entirely in the coming months, having a degree of profitability will, in general, help with the retention of jobs. If we have employers who, in general, are on EWSS and are already at a loss or just about breaking even and then the supports they are on go, as the public health crisis recedes, then the jobs that Deputy Nash cares about and that the Labour Party has protected through supporting this legislation, will be further threatened.