Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sections 5 to 10, inclusive, deal with the tax warehousing element of the Bill. Obviously, this was a very important provision that allowed for a bit of comfort and space for businesses. We see that, across the sector, about 10% of the eligible debt for warehousing has been warehoused, about €3 billion out of the €30 billion. Different companies responded in different ways in taking up the initiative. Some are paying back the warehouse debt that has been paid while others are warehousing a portion of it. About 5% of the businesses have warehoused all of the Covid-19 debt, which makes up about €300 million and 12,000 businesses.

The period now is coming to an end and we will start the period of a zero interest rate for a 12-month period until the end of April next year, after which the interest will start to kick in as normal, so there is still that window of comfort for individuals. However, we have seen, and this is probably understandable, a low level of insolvency during the pandemic because of these measures that have kept companies on life support in some cases and, in other cases, that were just a comfort they needed to be able to trade through. However, we saw an abnormally low level of insolvency. Has there been any modelling within the Department to show what will happen as this timeframe lapses, there is a requirement on the companies to start to pay back the debt and the interest starts to kick in? There have been suggestions in some quarters that a substantial amount of the €3 billion that is warehoused could have to be written off as bad debt as companies may fold. I just want to understand the Minister’s assessment. As always with any of these schemes, and we went in with eyes wide open with this scheme, there was always going to be a case where the Government was not going to get everything back, but without it, we would have had companies fold left, right and centre. Has there been any early assessment by done by Revenue or the Department on where they see the total amount of the €3 billion?

Adding to that question, given where we are at with the war in Ukraine and with it being one crisis after another - a pandemic followed by a war and economic sanctions that are having an impact not just on households and workers but also in some sectors and businesses, particularly those that have higher energy consumption or cannot access the type of materials they would have accessed heretofore - is there any consideration within the Department to looking at the debt warehousing timeframes for specific sectors that would be affected by the ongoing war in Ukraine and the economic consequences that flow from that?