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

I believe that fraud is fraud, be it welfare fraud, tax fraud or companies gaming Government grants. I take the same dim view of fraud, whether it is committed by an individual or by a company. I do not take the view, as I have seen some Deputies to my left do, that some forms of fraud are okay because of the social class of the person committing that fraud. That is a rather perverse way of thinking. Fraud is wrong, whether it is welfare fraud, tax fraud or corporate fraud, and it should be treated just the same.

Regarding the TWSS, I do not have any detail or breakdown as to which companies received money from the scheme or how much they received. I will seek that, as it is something that I have an interest in knowing. The scheme is open to all businesses, big and small. For a company to qualify, it has to have seen a major reduction in its revenues. Aer Lingus was one of the companies mentioned. It may well be the case that Aer Lingus was doing well a few months ago and had billions of euro in reserves, but that has fundamentally changed in the past couple of months. I do not know the details of that company's business operations, but I would say that it is burning through those reserves quickly. If it was not for the TWSS, the workers in Aer Lingus would be facing something much worse than they are now. I am surprised that the Deputy would want to impose that on them.

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