Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Tánaiste for attending and for the information. First, I will be a small bit parochial. I very much welcome the funding for the Tyndall Institute. It is not in my constituency, as members will be aware. I mean parochial in a different way. I used to represent the workers in the Tyndall Institute so I am happy to see some money going to them; they are good people.

With regard to some of the schemes underpinned by the additional funding, some appear to be doing well and others have a low uptake. For instance, does the Tánaiste have any indication as to why the Covid-19 life sciences products scheme and Covid-19 products scheme have had such low approval and pay-out leaves to date, with €1.9 million of €20 million and €500,000 of €5 million, respectively? The same goes for the ready for customs grant where €3.3 million has been approved and paid out of a fund of €20 million. I would have thought schemes that deal with providing medical and scientific products would be keenly taken up. It is most concerning that the Covid-19 credit guarantee scheme has only approved €52.8 million worth of loans out of a scheme total of €2 billion.

Does the Tánaiste believe anything can be learned from the terms of the future growth loans scheme that could be applied to the credit guarantee scheme? That scheme loaned out €444 million from a total of €800 million, which is more than 50%. The others do not seem to be reaching this numbers. Does the Tánaiste have a view on why that might be?