Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is not business as usual in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. We have the wage subsidy scheme, which is a massive and unprecedented scheme such as I have never seen in my lifetime. The State is essentially paying the wages of the best part of 500,000 employees in private sector firms so that they have retained their jobs. Nearly €2 billion has been paid out to date. It is one of the better schemes internationally, and that is not the case with every scheme we have introduced. It is money that is paid to companies to pay their staff so it is very much a bailout for the workers rather than for business.

A total of 34,000 businesses have availed already of the restart grant. Approximately €110 million has been approved out of the €250 million, so there is still €140 million to allocate. I am totally open to examining the scheme to see if we can improve it, make it better, more generous and open to more companies and to recognise the high costs the hospitality sector in particular has in reopening. That can be part of the work that we do in advance of the July jobs stimulus.

In terms of various loan schemes, I heard a few people speaking about the fact that money can be borrowed from the ECB at 0% or 0.5% and they asked why businesses have to pay 3% or 4%. The main reason is not due to the banks' margins, it is due to default. The nature of loans means that some businesses do not or cannot pay back their loans. We have a relatively high rate of default and a very low rate of repossession. That is also the reason we have somewhat higher mortgage interest rates in Ireland than other European countries. When a person or business does not pay back their loan, the cost of that is socialised in terms of higher interest rates on other businesses. When somebody does not pay back their mortgage the cost of that is socialised in terms of people who pay back their mortgage having to pay more. That is why it is such an unfair thing to do, not to pay one's bills and not to pay one's debts because one just passes on the cost to other people. In terms of what we can do in that regard, perhaps we can do better, for example, we will definitely look at introducing longer terms for the loans or a lower interest rate but we need to bear in mind that one always has to factor the default rate into any interest rate.

The question to be considered is who should bear the cost of that. Should it be other businesses or the taxpayer? That is never an easy question to answer. Again, that speaks to Deputy Nash's other proposal, which was to have a 100% loan guarantee. That puts 100% of the risk on the taxpayer, on society, ordinary people and workers. The last time we provided a 100% guarantee it did not work out so well, so we need to think about these things. The concept of a 100% guarantee sounds great. It means low interest rates for businesses, but somebody is paying for that guarantee, and it turns out to be the ordinary person, the taxpayer. That is why I am always a little bit cautious around 100% guarantees. To paraphrase a former banker, I think the bank should have skin in the game, but a 100% guarantee means it has no skin in the game and the taxpayer picks up the bill. I am not so keen on that. I am a little surprised to hear it being proposed by the Labour Party but strange things have been happening in politics of late.

In terms of the HSA inspections for Covid, 5,000 have been carried out so far. I am told we have approximately 500 inspectors but they are not all HSA inspectors. The number includes environmental health officers and people who have been seconded from other areas to help out with the inspections.

In terms of bailouts, to the best of my knowledge we have not yet had to bail out any big companies in Ireland but if we get into that space, as other countries have done, in particular on continental Europe, for airlines or other big industries, then I think in such circumstances there should be social and environmental obligations.

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