Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his opening statement and for his responses to colleagues thus far. To follow on from what has been said, I have three questions I wish to raise with the Minister. The first relates to the EWSS and is somewhat retrospective at this stage. I refer to the conditions that companies had to meet in order to qualify for the scheme and, in particular, the 30% drop in turnover condition. The point was made to me by a number of hospitality businesses in my constituency that while they had a relatively good trading period between 1 and 19 December, when the 8 p.m. curfew was introduced, business dropped off. They had to take into account their turnover between 1 and 19 December but the curfew continued into January. A lot of businesses simply pulled down the shutters when the 8 p.m. curfew was announced. I can think of three pubs and one restaurant in my village of Stepaside that did that because they did not want to run the risk. Is there a lesson to be learned there in terms of flexibility so that the supports are most effective in keeping people in work? What can be done for those businesses that kept the lights on and the doors open as much as possible? A lot of businesses, particularly in the hospitality sector, simply could not afford to close because customers would get used to not going to them. It is a volatile sector and we knew that long before the pandemic hit.