Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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I disagree with the Minister. He does not have this power because he decided to introduce the scheme in a manner that does not give him such a power. There is a way around that. The fact is he introduced the higher rates which, as I said, are welcome. He had set his face against doing that, however. Sinn Féin argued for months that the rate paid under the scheme was too low. Unfortunately, we had to have severe restrictions imposed for health purposes, which necessitated legislative change. That shows that this has not been thought through. There is an issue here. The Minister should have allowed for change on a regional basis and the option to introduce the higher rate at a given point in time.

The CRSS is in operation, and we are legislating here for a higher rate of the EWSS. The schemes will be complementary. If there is a severe lockdown in the first quarter of next year, businesses will need to avail of both schemes again. That will not be possible in the case of one of them without legislative change. It demonstrates a lack of foresight, planning and preparation that it would require the Oireachtas to come together and pass what could possibly be deemed emergency legislation to allow this to happen in circumstances where none of us knows what restrictions could apply to the Houses of the Oireachtas at that point. It is a mistake not to provide the scope to reintroduce this.

Naturally, I am not in favour of giving the Minister these kinds of powers and would normally take the contrary view that the matter should go before the Houses of the Oireachtas. We are not, however, in normal times and we need the ability to be able to reintroduce and turn these supports on and off in line with other restrictions. As I said, the fact is that the CRSS will run complementary to this during the period to December and January because it is needed at this point. Both schemes are needed and may, unfortunately, be needed at some point in the future. Without legislative change, however, the power will not be available to provide anything but the low rate of €203 to these businesses. That is a mistake. I will leave it at that.