Ms Teresa McGrane:

The Department of Finance extended it by a year during the pandemic, so, if you like, we lost a year during the pandemic when production shut down but we gained that other year. What we felt about the regional uplift, which is now in its dying days as we go into the 2%, is that it was a fantastic initiative for pushing production out of Dublin and Wicklow and developing the production base around the country. A further issue arose which is that it was initially linked to a state aid map. That map has just changed again this year for next year so it is questionable, even if it had not tapered off, how valuable it could be. It was going to be rather messy and chaotic as to what was going to be included and excluded.