Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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No matter what the scheme, if you are trying to potentially reach in excess of 300,000, it is going to be impossible to have a perfectly seamless design. The rules are there to try to reach and support as many companies as possible as quickly as we can. Will some companies that do not need support qualify for it? Possibly, but the capacity is not in the system to go through every company in such a high level of detail. Naturally, if companies abuse the rules of a self-assessed scheme, Revenue will deal with them when it carries out spot checks. Likewise, where companies availed of Covid supports and it was shown in the long run that they were not assessed properly, Revenue has gone back in and there is a claw-back procedure in place. As to whether a company is in need, the cap will deal with that to some extent by preventing companies from drawing down excessively from the fund. It is designed to reach the majority of SMEs that need this assistance and are going through a very difficult time.