Mr. John McGrane:

I could give an example of a significant employer in the Border counties area, namely, Abcon in Cootehill. The Smith family employs 160 people from the local community – jobs that would not be manufacturable, to use the word, in any other way. It is a very significant community resource. Their bill in October two years ago was €9,500 for energy. Last year it had already gone up to €19,000. In October of this year, it was €33,000. It is off the Richter scale. All schemes, as colleagues have rightly appreciated, are welcome.

Indeed, as a nation, we learned a lot in Covid about the importance of using the State’s money, which comes from the taxes collected from employees and employers, to make sure we do not turn out the lights on those employers and employees. We need to go further in how we are thinking about this.

The Minister for Finance talks about shift or shock. We have had the conversation about whether the energy matter is here to stay or is a short-term shock. Please God, it is a short-term shock and, if that is the case, there is little justification for saying we should not help businesses to fully sustain the shock effect and take other measures that can roll that forward, or regard it as a grant. Businesses cannot sustain these kinds of price increases. Some 160 jobs in an irreplaceable business in Cavan are at stake, along with those in associated retail and other services. By the way, it is not a foreign direct investment company. It does not have those resources or IDA Ireland to argue its case. It has support from Enterprise Ireland, which is very appreciated, but Enterprise Ireland is not in a position to help the company on this.