Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I have made the decision not to do an economic budgetary forecast on budget day beyond next year, which is a decision that does not have much precedent because, even in putting together budgets many years ago when things were very unpredictable, it was always possible to put together an outlook regarding what we thought the economy would look like in two years' time. Precisely because of the two issues the Deputy has raised, which is where we stand with Brexit and the availability of a vaccine, we have decided not to do a budgetary forecast beyond next year. On budget day we will update where we are in 2020 and 2021 and we will not go beyond that. We have not assumed the broad availability of a vaccine for almost all of next year because of the need to be careful about the assumptions we are making.

I have touched on some of the sectors that are most adversely affected. We are coming into challenges regarding the trade-offs between universally available schemes that have a big impact on and are a big help to everybody and the fact that not everyone is being impacted equally. Every government and parliament dealing with Covid-19 is now grappling with that. The tools available to deal with that include grants. For example, the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, has already done a great deal from a grant point of view to try to support different parts of our society and economy. The choices regarding the temporary wage subsidy scheme and any future wage subsidy scheme are difficult because any effort we make to change the operation of the subsidy scheme for one part of the economy has big impacts on the rest of us. That is difficult for us.