Ms Anne Coleman-Dunne:

It is a very fair question.

Initially there were the Brexit short-term and long-term loan schemes, which have now been overtaken by the Brexit impact loan scheme. We saw that it morphed into that. In our enterprise forum where we met with businesses and stakeholders, originally it was all about Brexit. We were meeting with them throughout to 2018 and 2019. Suddenly, in 2020, that was subsumed by Covid-19 and the committee became about looking at that. The Brexit supports the Department offered then morphed into Covid and Brexit supports. The committee members may see the data we published on the website, which are about Covid and Brexit.

Again, who anticipated the current situation in Ukraine? In that way, our Department and the Tánaiste are always looking at reviewing the schemes we have and asking whether they are responsive to the particular needs of the day. That is as much as I can say on that at this stage. The Deputy will see that, in the trajectory from Brexit to Covid, the Department has made the quantum leap to assist businesses in that way as well.