Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Okay. To give a sense of the Ukrainian credit guarantee scheme, which is the one that is still up and running, each lender must be able to demonstrate that the advantage of the State guarantee is passed on to the largest extent possible to borrowers. During the open call application process, lenders were required to demonstrate their proposed pricing reductions. Lenders now participating in the scheme are required to demonstrate such reductions in their legal arrangements with the Minister and to borrowers in their loan arrangements. Up to the end of November of last year, 1,804 loans with a value of €164 million were drawn, so it is not a small amount. Some 59% of loans had interest rates of 4.75% or less; 33% of loans had interest rates between 4.76% and 6%; and 8% of loans had interest rates above 6%.

This is effectively the State intervening to provide a certain level of guarantee to funds that are loaned out by financial institutions and, by doing so, trying to drive down the rates which they are costing against risk. It is working and will continue into this year.

We hope to launch the industrial strategy for offshore wind in the last week of March. We will probably need to have a draft to be completed certainly by the middle of February. Our team are under a little bit of pressure on that but it is a good piece of work. The offshore wind discussion is, of course, a climate, emissions and decarbonisation discussion, but it is also an industrial opportunity discussion that can generate an awful lot of new employment, jobs and sustainable industry, even for high energy-use industry such as semiconductor manufacturing and data centres. If there is an abundant source of clean, renewable energy coming onshore from the Irish Sea, the south coast, the Celtic Sea and up the west coast, there are huge opportunities for rebalancing the Irish economy away from a reliance on carbon-based fuels to a much more renewable and cleaner source of power. We will need more power in Ireland. The idea that we respond to our emissions challenge by just doing less activity and energy usage can be applied to some sectors, but if the Irish economy and Irish population are going to grow, we will need to shift a great deal more power usage onto the electricity grid, invest in that grid, ensure we have interconnection of that grid with other parts of Europe and, most importantly, ensure we are generating power for that grid from renewable sources, both onshore and offshore. If we do that, it will be a big part of our competitiveness proposition in the late 2020s and into the 2030s in attracting big industry and business from other parts of the world to Ireland and in facilitating Irish companies to grow.

There is no huge cost for now in putting the strategy together, apart, of course, from the team that are working on it, but there will be a cost to the State in how we respond to that industrial opportunity in infrastructure in parts of the country that can take significant advantage of that. In Waterford, for example, there is potentially a big opportunity in servicing offshore wind infrastructure out of the Port of Waterford. In the Shannon Estuary, there is the redevelopment of Foynes Port to make it suitable for the assembly of offshore wind infrastructure, particularly floating infrastructure because of the wet storage and depth which Foynes has. In Cork Harbour, for example, we will be expecting the Port of Cork to invest well over €100 million in new facilities to assemble predominantly fixed to the seabed offshore wind infrastructure. We want it to have that capacity in place by the middle of 2026. There are significant cost implications for the Government and for commercial State agencies, bodies and companies, but the industrial strategy needs to be in place first so that we understand what that looks like.

On the Digital Markets Act, there is a cost to this which I outlined earlier, and this is primarily a staffing and regulatory cost. We will have our digital services co-ordinator, as part of Coimisiún na Meán, in place by the time this legislation takes effect, post 17 February. We are under a bit of pressure to get that legislation finalised, ready and enacted in time. The Opposition has been very helpful in helping us meet that timeline to get the legislation in place. As I said earlier, we have allocated significant increases in financial resources to be able to take on more people. I think we will be taking on approximately 40 people in that office this year and more, probably, into next year.

On the work and employment permits, intercompany transfers and reunification of spouses, the Department of Justice is currently considering a change to facilitate spouses of people here under intercompany transfers permits. That is something the Deputy has raised on a number of occasions. We need to be careful that is not abused in any way, but it is appropriate that where people are moving within companies and have work permits to do so, we should not restrict that movement by not allowing people to bring their spouses with them. Often, to facilitate spouses coming, potentially they need to be allowed to work too. I am very open to and supportive of that as long as it is managed and confined to the right areas.

On grants to trade unions, €900,000 is allocated per annum to fund education and training for trade union representatives to assist in orderly industrial relations. There are training programmes that take place within trade unions so they can interact in a way that is informed in terms of industrial relations, the Workplace Relations Commission, the Department and so on. We continue to grant-aid trade unions to help them with the cost of that, which is appropriate. A sum of €60,000 is allocated per annum to a training fund to assist and support trade unions where they amalgamate.