Dr. Orlaigh Quinn:

My sense is that we put a lot of money into the economy at a critical time to support businesses. I would be very surprised if we find a high rate of abuse of that scheme because of the criteria that were set in terms of commercial rates, businesses closed and 25% turnover. Until we see the full data, which we obviously will, I would say we set the criteria sufficiently high while at the same time making sure that people were able to get access to the funds quickly. It was always that balance between the public finances and the code when we were trying to achieve good.

We had never done this kind of scheme before. It is perhaps something we will look at as part of the review. We had to find operators that were close to the ground and we picked the local authorities. It was done in an emergency. It was not one I would have stood over if I was asked to roll out a scheme to support businesses. It was done in an emergency. It achieved what we wanted it to achieve. I look forward to the evaluation because there will be huge learning. If this happened again, is it the Department that does it? Should we have rolled it out directly via the local authorities? There were all these questions at the time. When I look back, we put our hands up and said we would manage and do it because somebody had to do it at the time. There was such pressure on those small businesses.