Ms Patricia King:

I will answer the Deputy's questions. Throughout 2019, congress, in its own right, took several initiatives to speak to various Departments about developing a comprehensive short-time working scheme that would not be just a reflection of the current scheme, but would be one focused on a Brexit scenario involving companies that were going to be in difficulty for some time but had all the prospects of being viable. As I said in my submission, this would mirror the scheme in Germany. How could we develop that in Ireland?

I visited a number of Departments, on one occasion in concert with IBEC. Unfortunately, the response from those Departments was quite slow. There was a lack of speed in taking ownership of the issue. I had to visit a number of Departments before I got anybody to take ownership of having a discussion about it. Eventually, I did. When we got to that stage, there was little enthusiasm for developing it until the very end. Covid took over then and we had no substantive conversations. In principle, I understand that the Departments of Social Protection and Enterprise, Trade and Employment are now more inclined to explore the possibility of a German-type model being introduced in Ireland. This is about keeping contact with the workplace, developing and upskilling people and having workers ready in the same employment when the company becomes viable again. The discussions have been slow. I was disappointed by the effort we had to put in to get people to take it on board and talk to us. I am also disappointed that we have not reached any agreement by now. We should have done so given what will happen by the end of the year.