Ms Anne-Marie Walsh:

I will respond and colleagues may want to contribute also. Rather than those one-off targeted schemes, the response of the Government of late and in budget 2024 has been to pursue more general measures, such as the decrease in the VAT rate on gas and electricity, the extension of the excise rate reductions and other measures targeted towards the general business environment.

The Deputy asked about insolvencies specifically. We see the trend that insolvencies are increasing and there is an inevitability about that. As the Covid and pandemic supports unwind, insolvency rates, which were artificially low during 2020 and 2021, are coming back up. Again, we are not seeing anything immediately in the data we are studying that suggests that it is at crisis point. The support has been provided for general measures to support the many, rather than for targeted one-off schemes. We continue to look at the data and work with our colleagues in the other Departments, and we provide the information and advice to the Ministers, the senior officials groups and so on. We are actively monitoring the position.