Mr. Leo Clancy:

I might ask my colleague, Mr. Leahy, to delve a little deeper into what I am going to say about technical limitations to people making payments over the period when a grant or loan is in place. With the sustaining enterprise fund that we operated during Covid-19 and the substantial grant aid paid out, we looked closely and carefully that measures such as the subordination of dividend payments. Directors payments and so on were considered in all the cases. It is a very delicate balance. We are in the middle of our discussion about how we handle that in the context of the Ukraine energy enterprise crisis scheme. It is a very careful balance between being able to ensure, as the Deputy rightly says, that companies do not do the wrong thing and making sure that they continue to be incentivised to invest in their businesses. The balance we always strike in respect of these things is that a company may not avail of the support, curtail its operations, lose jobs and take that as a consideration just because directors feel that they are not going to receive payments they think are due to them. We are always careful of that. We administer State funds; we are not in the business of subsidising companies just so they can make payments to directors. We can never be in that situation.