Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We will discuss credit unions on Report Stage. The argument is that there could be a carve-out in relation to credit unions. That is what has been suggested. We will look into the matter in greater detail. I am happy to park it until our discussion on Report Stage.

When I spoke about cash reserves, I was not talking about having a measurement based on cash reserves. I was talking about the fact that there are companies that will benefit from this provision that have large cash reserves. For a number of years, the Government has supported businesses. I hope we have reached the end of the period of needing to provide emergency support schemes. There are ongoing supports in research and development, and other types of supports. With the scarcity of resources within the State, the Minister has repeatedly reminded us about the need to impose levies on different individuals. This scheme will assist people who do not need support such as large and multinational businesses. Their profits may be affected but they would be able to trade through this time. I believe we need to build capacity in a far more targeted way, in case - touch wood - further interventions are required in the future. The report calls for us to look at this matter because we had the pandemic and now we have an energy crisis. Before that, we had Brexit but we did not have the same need to stabilise businesses across the board.

The Minister is right to say that the scheme is based on unit prices. Earlier, I mentioned hypothetical businesses. The reality is that the company owned, hypothetically, by Deputy Matthews would still have to pay more for energy - a bill of €7,000 compared with €5,400 - because of the unit price, the supplier and all of the different changes. It is not the case that we have one supplier in the State and all of the unit prices are the same. We will have different points where unit prices have increased, etc. and that is an issue.

For example, if your bill has gone up by 40% you are outside of this scheme.