Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a straightforward Bill. We are talking about cash flow and working capital for businesses. We all welcome this legislation and see its necessity. We all come from places that are absolutely reliant on SMEs and microenterprises. These are the people we know in the community who provide employment to other people in the community. I do not need to go into the domestic and global hit that businesses and we as a society have taken. We need to ensure we can come out of this, and the only way we can do so is by supporting those businesses that were viable before the pandemic. Some people and businesses were dealing with difficulties beforehand. As some other Deputies have stated, a solution will never be found in a banking sector that is utterly reliant on profit. That is fair enough from a business point of view, but the sector is not able or willing to do what we need it to do at this point.

We have had difficulties with the restart grant. A number of people could not qualify on the basis that they have not paid rates. A significant number of people found the grant was not sufficient to get them back up and running because it was based on the rates they had paid. While we have had some solutions for people who are self-employed, there are still difficulties. It is straightforward: the money is just not enough for the businesses to wash their faces.

Sinn Féin has tabled an amendment to this legislation to deal with microfinance loans but, really, the power lies with the Minister of State, Deputy English, the Tánaiste and the Government. It comes down to the fact that it is about interest rates. Many have already mentioned this. We are talking about people sometimes having to pay interest rates of 4.5% or 5.5% or sometimes higher. People at times have to go to loan sharks and are charged extortionate rates. The fact is that if people need to get money to keep their businesses going, they will be willing to do that, but it is not the support they need. We definitely need to look at grant aid for specific businesses. If we can draw down loans from Europe at a negative interest rate, and if we are now looking at the possibility of a Europe-wide recovery and fiscal stimulus, we need to ensure we can get adequate and fair access to such moneys and provide them to businesses as they need. Some of that will be grant aid. Many businesses will not be able to reopen. They are caught in certain situations. I think other Deputies mentioned the fact that we have people in the arts sector looking at no possibility they will be able to operate major gigs or anything like that in the near future, so we will have to have bespoke solutions.

The big thing is that we need to ensure we are able to give people interest rates as close as possible to 0%. We need to ensure that the risk assessment is streamlined, particularly when we are talking about businesses that were viable beforehand, so we can foresee that these businesses will be viable into the future. We have to protect them now. It will be a lot more costly if we let these businesses go to the wall, if we do not introduce a stimulus and if we do not catch them before they fall. It will cost a hell of a lot more to create new jobs and put new businesses in place. If we do not pay to keep these businesses open, we will pay through social protection payments and other costs. That is before we even talk about the societal damage that letting them fail may cause.

I spoke last night to a woman who spoke about making an application. In fairness, I think people will only commend the local enterprise offices and the work they have done. She said, however, that while the repurposed Brexit loans were welcome, when she tried to apply she found that the payback mechanisms and interest rates were a lot worse than when she just went and found her own credit through banks, which is far from perfect. A huge amount of her cost is from a small hairdressing business. In fairness to her, she carried out works on it from the point of view of being able to operate best practice as regards physical distancing. This was combined with the added cost she has of ensuring that everybody is healthy and maintains cleanliness, which is absolutely necessary for infection control. Such people really need to be helped out.

Throughout this island, this State, we have towns such as Dundalk and Drogheda that need this kind of support. If we do not have it, a huge number of people will hit the wall, and the impact that that will have on all of us will be spectacular, so we need to stop it before it starts. We need to streamline the risk assessment and ensure for loans such as this that we can give people interest rates of as close to 0% as is possible. I am leaving this with the Minister of State, Deputy English, and the Tánaiste. They have the power to bring this to Cabinet. We need to ensure it happens. This is the reason more people have not applied for these loans. There are other difficulties. The fact is that this just needs streamlining. It is as simple as that. Combined with that, we need to ensure that the July stimulus programme contains an adequate response.

We need to accept that different resources will be needed for different business sectors of society. Some people will not be looking at full reopenings and will be looking only at partial work or no work into August, September, October and beyond. We need to ensure they do not go to the wall. These businesses are the people within our community who employ other people within our community. We need to back them. If we do not, we will be headed for something far worse even than what we dealt with back in 2007 and 2008 and right through what people term the age of austerity, which we certainly do not need to go back to. What we need to do now is ensure we give people the working capital to operate the businesses that were viable beforehand and will be viable again. We need to ensure that employment is maintained and that we can put our society back into action.

If that requires that we get the proper resources and supports domestically and from Europe, that needs to be done. We also need to tackle the other issues that have already been mentioned in relation to the insurance fiasco that businesses are dealing with and the fact that we need banks to play ball.

See this speech in context