Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Tánaiste on his appointment at this very important time for our society and our economy. On behalf of the Labour Party, I wish him well. He, and the new Government in its entirety, can be assure of robust but constructive opposition from myself and my Labour Party colleagues at this critical time for our economy and our society. Where we disagree with the Tánaiste, we will tell him why in robust terms but we will also seek to provide workable solutions and alternatives to any of his plans that we oppose or critique.

The plight of our country is far too serious for us to resort to politics as usual but, sadly, it seems it is business as usual in the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation with regard to the schemes for which we are today asked to provide additional support. As a House, we all agree that businesses, particularly our microenterprises and our small and medium firms, which employ more than 1 million people, need urgent support. In fact, they needed it three months ago but the response of the previous Government in providing well designed, accessible liquidity supports was tone deaf. Instead of loans at near zero interest and grants, such as were provided by other EU states, the Government packaged up existing commercial rates of 4% to 6%, which I remind the Tánaiste is double the EU average, and termed them a support.

This is despite the fact that 0% interest rates are available from the ECB for us to provide better and cheaper supports to businesses. It appears that this Government is still hell-bent on prioritising the profits and the margins of the banks, partly-State owned banks of course, over direct cash grant-aid supports for community businesses. This strategy is akin to handing a drowning person an anchor instead of a lifebuoy; he or she will simply sink.

The first thing I would expect from the Minister is to re-examine the design of the current business supports that are available, many of which in my view are completely unfit for purpose. This should include a fit-for-purpose 100% credit guarantee scheme, along with direct grant aid, as we have seen in countries such as Switzerland. I have used that example time and again in the House. The Revised Estimates indicate that much of the additional resources the Minister is asking us to allocate to the Department today will go to various Enterprise Ireland schemes and that is to be welcomed. Everything that can be done should be done to rescue viable firms and to support jobs.

Before the Dáil gives the green light to this additional expenditure, it is important we know how many jobs Enterprise Ireland and the IDA believe we may lose this year and therefore the number of jobs this additional funding will help to maintain and support. I hope the Minister is in a position to provide the Dáil with those figures today. This need for urgent business supports does not discount the need for social and environmental conditionality to be attached to them, in particular for large and already profitable companies. We must ensure that we, the taxpayers, are not subsidising the profits of tax-dodging firms to funnel their profits through tax havens, for example. When I raised this particular point with the Secretary General of the Department in the Covid-19 committee earlier this month I was told it was "not on the radar". Sadly, this country has a less than proud history of providing no-strings-attached bailouts and we are living with the consequences since. This is despite the fact that countries as diverse as Denmark, Scotland, Poland, France and Italy have attached such conditions, so why should Ireland be any different? It is good public policy and normal practice in civilised western European democracies that we would see attached to taxpayer-funded bailouts positive public policy goals. It is important that we use the levers that we have available to achieve a different kind of Ireland. The Minister mentioned it in his response to Deputy Hourigan, and I ask him to make this a priority and to ensure that the taxpayer does not just get value for money but that a range of economic, social and environmental performance indicators and benefits attach to the enormous State funding he is proposing to provide to businesses across the country to rescue them and to support and sustain jobs.

I am concerned that under the regulation heading the Revised Estimate suggests a mere 8% of additional funding on top of what is already allocated for that purpose. On Monday, we entered phase 3 with thousands more businesses reopening and workers returning to their workplace. It is essential that we embed a culture of compliance with health and safety measures that are designed to prevent a second surge of Covid-19 at this early stage. The prominence of Health and Safety Authority, HSA, inspections will be key in this regard, yet the Department does not seem to have revised the output target for inspections. The same number of inspections have been provided for this year as last year, and the number of inspectors in the field does not seem to match the increased need for regulation. In the Covid committee interrogation of these issues a couple of weeks ago the Secretary General of the Department suggested that there would be approximately 500 HSA inspectors on the ground in the coming period. Could the Minister take the opportunity provided to him this afternoon to confirm the number of inspections planned this year compared to last year in the context of the coronavirus? How many inspectors are there currently in the field? What additional cost does that entail and is it accounted for in the Revised Estimate the Minister is asking us to support today?

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