Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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If we look at the consumption forecast, overall we are still expecting consumption in our economy to grow but, as Deputy Farrell noted, at a slower pace than would have been the case in the absence of this war. We are still expecting consumption growth, albeit at a slower pace.

To deal with Deputy Farrell's question on the SME impact and what that will look like, the reason we put in place such an extraordinary set of economy supports is to give every chance to every enterprise that was viable before the pandemic hit to still be viable and to be able to trade successfully when the pandemic and the effect of the pandemic had moderated within our economy. It is incredibly difficult to form a forecast regarding what will be the impact on the viability of SMEs later on in the year as our economic supports finally go in a few weeks' time because of all of the other change happening our economy at the same time. We expect to go back to a normal level of insolvency, which has been suppressed for a while, but what we have done is twofold. We have, first, run the supports for longer than many would have expected and, second, as Deputy Farrell will be aware, the Minister of State in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Troy, has brought in two changes to insolvency and examinership procedures to help smaller companies to have a better chance to emerge from a period of economic and financial difficulty, for which that Department legislated at the end of last year.

It is encouraging to see the CSO figures that came out today stating that 84% of firms have come through the pandemic and are trading viably. What we will do as we approach the budget, because at that point we will have had a number of months in which the supports have not been in place, is to try to give a clearer view at that point regarding what is the impact on the viability of SMEs due to the withdrawal of the supports. I am hopeful that it will be a low impact because of how long we have run the supports but, obviously, I cannot guarantee that.