Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I will address the Department first on SCARP. The committee looked for such a process and it is good to see it up and running and obviously rescuing companies. As for the survival rate, it is important that the Department collate data to show how companies are performing on the other side of this process.

The Department and Revenue are very close to and understand the individual business sectors and the major challenges that are going to come up. The same challenges are going to come up in the same sectors by and large because many of them relate to the kind of industry profiling that is going on. When looking at the viability of the business, I contend that bad debt is one of the ways to put a business out of business. A business may be viable but unable to carry the debt loss. As regards those companies that have failed the SCARP process, does the Department have an understanding of whether they had a viability problem caused by the amount of debt they were carrying as a result of a debtor account not being paid? I refer to businesses that have suffered a bad debt and writing it off would not help them because it is part of their cash flow. That is just one area I am wondering about.

It is important, going forward, that the Department tries to provide more information to understand business viability challenges because those business sectors will come in here next year to lobby us for grants, tax breaks and employee supports because of the problems they are having. It is important the Department has an understanding of that. I ask the Department to address that, after which I will move to Revenue. Have I confused the witnesses?