Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Covid supports specifically for business are being phased out. The CRSS, which is the weekly grant for businesses that are closed, is effectively gone now because there are no businesses closed. The EWSS is being phased out at the moment for a lot of businesses such as in retail, construction, manufacturing and the services sector. For them it will end at the end of April. For those sectors that were hit by the 8 p.m. rule - hospitality and entertainment, for example - it will run until the end of May. Tax warehousing runs until April, although the Minister for Finance is looking at the possibility of extending that. The concessionary 9% VAT rate runs until August. After that, we are back to just the traditional supports previously provided through Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and LEOs.

The remit of local enterprise offices has slightly changed in that traditionally they would have only assisted businesses with ten or fewer employees. That has now been changed so that they can assist businesses with more than ten employees, but there can be a complication in that some EU state aid rules do not allow us to grant aid businesses with more than ten employees. As a general policy, LEOs will now be able to assist slightly larger businesses.

In terms of challenges, Brexit and Covid are not gone away yet. I do not think it will happen, but we always have to be wise to the risk of a further serious wave of Covid that might result in restrictions being imposed, so we have to bear in mind that possibility. As Deputies will be very aware, Brexit is still playing out and the final trade arrangements between Britain and Ireland and between Britain and the EU are not yet resolved, nor are some of the issues around the protocol.

As the Deputy mentioned, labour shortages are definitely a major issue in the economy at the moment. Almost every employer in almost every sector tells me that they now struggle to find staff. The unwinding of the PUP and EWSS might ease the situation, but also the other issue is work permits. We might get back to that later, but we are trying to deal with the very significant backlog that has developed because of a surge in applications for work permits and rising costs, both of which are not under the control of the Government. Rising energy costs are hitting businesses just as they are hitting households. On rising insurance costs, people know the work we are doing through the Action Plan for Insurance Reform to try and get employers' liability, EL, and public liability, PL, down in particular. We got good results in motor insurance, but we are not yet seeing EL and PL insurance costs coming down.

On the agrifood scheme, €70 million of the €100 million has been allocated to businesses around the country to help them to essentially diversify into markets other than the UK and to move up the value chain with the food products they produce. We have €30 million that is not yet allocated, but we will allocate that this year. We will do a further call for that €30 million, in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, again encouraging food producers to essentially invest capital to modernise their plant, become more sustainable environmentally and produce products that are higher up the value chain.

In terms of the towns, every town is different, so every town needs its own plan, but we are helping with the remote working hubs. We do not fund them all through Enterprise Ireland; others are funded through the Department of Rural and Community Development under the Minister, Deputy Humphreys. There is a lot of them now - 150 or so - and we think there will be 400 by the end of the year. Connectedhubs.ieis a very good website to take a look at and see where the hubs are and how easy it is to book a hot desk almost anywhere in the country if someone needs one. We see ourselves continuing to invest in them in the years to come because it allows us to bring old buildings in town and village centres back to use and get people back into the town and village centres, which is exactly what we want.

The IDA Ireland property programme is working very well. I know people often ask why the authority does not do more site visits to their county or town, but if you do a site visit, ideally, you want to show the visitors something. What has been successful around the country is where IDA Ireland built out an office building or a factory and it is then ready to be taken over by the investor. Of the 11 built in recent times, nine are occupied, and we are going to continue to build them out around the country so that we can have more options for multinationals in particular to invest in all parts of the country and not just in Dublin. I think I have probably covered everything there.