Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes, but they are different. It is possible that in Deputy Matthews's scenario, Deputy Doherty is right. If the cost of Deputy Matthews's bill has gone up by a smaller amount than that of a peer company - the actual value of the bill has gone up by a smaller amount than that of the company beside him - as long as the unit cost has gone up by 50%, that is what will determine whether the company comes into the scheme.

The reason we made that design choice was that we did not want companies that were trying to be energy efficient and to mitigate the growth in the value of their bills finding themselves excluded from the scheme. That is why, when we were designing the scheme, we started off by considering the change in the value of the bill. That is not where we ended up, however. We ended up choosing the percentage change in energy unit cost month by month because we still want to incentivise companies to be energy efficient. This means that companies where the unit cost has gone up by more than 50%, but the value of their bill has gone up by a lesser amount, are on the scheme. I think that is the right design choice. However, to go back to the point I opened with, it is in the interest not only of the Oireachtas but also of the Department of Finance to get as much information as possible on the operation of the scheme and to make what we can publicly available. This will enable us to continue to look at these design choices as the scheme operates, to understand the cost and to understand whether we have got the design choices right.

On the point made by Deputy Ó Murchú, TBESS is available to tax-compliant businesses that carry out a trade or a profession and the profits of which are eligible to tax under case 1 or case 2 of Schedule D where they meet the eligibility criteria. If companies supply heat through communal and district heating schemes, and they are carrying on a trade that is chargeable to tax under case 1 of Schedule D, they will be eligible for support under TBESS where conditions of the scheme are met. If companies are not-for-profit entities, however, it is unlikely they are going to be recorded as a trade that is chargeable to tax and, therefore, they would not be eligible. Reference has been made to this limitation in the eligibility of enterprises.

There is a state aid issue with regard to credit unions, which have been the subject of some focus. The bigger issue is that credit unions, as I understand it, are not on case 1 or case 2 of tradeable income and, as a result, are not on the scheme. The cost consequences of beginning to include enterprises that are also on case 3 and have a taxable relationship with Revenue Commissioners under that heading, and what that would mean for the scheme, are not clear to me at the moment. That is a further reason it is difficult to deal with the inclusion of credit unions as the Deputy has asked me to consider.