Dr. Dermot Coates:

I thank Deputy Bruton for the questions. We are doing a piece of work at the moment on the ratio of corporate births and deaths, which is effectively incorporations versus corporate insolvencies. I can certainly come back to him on that. From memory, the figure still runs at about 10:1. For every firm we see becoming insolvent, whether it is receivership, examinership, liquidation, etc., there are ten firms born in the same time period. That is subject to a degree of seasonality across the year, as one would expect, but if the figure is 10:1, as of last month, that is not particularly different from what it would have been four or five years ago. Again, that is from memory.

There is a particular piece of work there to drill into, because we want to understand more. This comes back to Deputy O'Reilly's earlier comments and questions on whether there is a sectoral pattern or dynamic emerging that looks different to the pre-Covid era when a lot of firms acquired a lot of the debt they are currently carrying, and following some of the new measures the Government introduced in recent months. We have some data, which I am happy to share, through the secretariat, but that gives a general flavour. In spite of the talk about the difficulties businesses face, we still see more firms coming on stream than are closing.