Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I join my party colleagues in welcoming this Bill to the floor of the House and I express my support for the amendments tabled by Deputy O'Reilly.

I will take this opportunity to raise the issue of SMEs in my home county of Clare. Tourism is a large seasonal employer in County Clare, particularly in west Clare. Many of these businesses are small, family-run operations and operate mainly in the summer months when the industry is at its busiest. These businesses, along with many self-employed tradespersons, transportation companies and other microbusinesses, are struggling to cope as the country reopens post Covid-19. As the Minister is aware, the tourism sector across the island has taken a major blow this year due to Covid-19 and the travel restrictions. This has place between 6,000 and 8,000 seasonal jobs at risk in County Clare alone. This and Monday's announcement that Shannon Airport is looking for redundancies and pay cuts among its staff, as well as the imminent closure of Moneypoint power station, have placed a dark grey cloud over the county. Large-scale unemployment in the county is a real possibility.

A recent survey carried out by Ennis Chamber of Commerce in the middle of the pandemic found some startling numbers for the SME sector in County Clare. One of the major issues for businesses was the lack of support they were receiving from their insurance providers. This will not be a surprise to this House as the matter has been raised on several occasions. A total of 48% of respondents in the survey answered "No" when asked whether their insurance had been co-operative during the crisis. That figure is just not good enough. When asked to predict their losses going forward, 33% of respondents indicated their business losses would be between 25% and 50%, with a further 31% indicating the losses would be between 50% and 70%.

I have been told stories of grant applications being refused because they came in an hour after the deadline on a Friday evening. These SMEs have, in many cases, reduced their staffing costs to save money. This often means that administrative staff are still on furlough and the business owner is working full days before having to head home to complete the paperwork later in the evening. This is why these applications need to be simple and easy to access and complete. They need to be free from red tape and they cannot have long processing times. While it is welcome that Microfinance Ireland has been processing applications during this crisis, we need to ensure that this continues. Loans provided via Microfinance Ireland are calculated on interest rates of between 5.5% and 6.5%. How will this be of assistance to any SME facing major issues with cash flow? It is astonishing. Bank of Ireland, for example, is advertising loans to SMEs for a much better rate of 5.48% in some cases. While these loans are seen to be an easier route to finance compared with the banks, these interest rates are not competitive. For this reason, we must ensure the rates are kept as low as possible so these companies can afford to repay loans without taking on any more crippling finance they may not be able to afford down the line. At a time when the Government can borrow at 0% interest and sometimes even at negative interest rates, it is time we used this access to low interest rates to pass this on to our SMEs at the most affordable rate possible.

It is safe to say that this is a major difference of repayment amounts for a company that is already struggling to stay afloat. In a small business, this could be the difference between rehiring a part-time student and not doing so. As much as anyone else, students are dependent on these posts over the summer months to help support them over the college year. This is yet another group that is forgotten about. Canada, for example, announced at the end of April an emergency student benefit for students who have seen summer work dry up and do not qualify for their version of our pandemic unemployment payment, PUP. While it was welcome that students with part-time jobs could qualify for the PUP, this does not cover all students. While I acknowledge the Tánaiste's comments on youth unemployment, we must ensure our young people do not get left behind as we re-image post Covid-19.

Some self-employed persons, such as plumbers, carpenters and bus and taxi operators, found themselves out of work, many of them for the first time in their lives, and started to draw the PUP. Now, as the country reopens, they are being offered small jobs here and there. The problem for these people is that they must sign off the PUP if they take even one day's work. Therefore, it is not practical for them to take such work. Being self-employed means they are not entitled to claim casual jobseeker's payments which would allow them to sign off for the days they got work.

With so many people out of work or on reduced wages or hours upon returning to work, there is significant hesitation about completing home improvement works. For tradespeople, this reduced workload could continue for some time. These people are also being forgotten. There are families contemplating whether it is a good or bad idea to sign off and take the risk. They are worried what will happen at the end of all this when the PUP stops. They have other halves who cannot go back to work because they do not have the childcare facilities available to them to do so should both need to work on the same day. Many of these family-run companies have been around for years and many of them weathered the financial crisis of the 1980s and the crash of the Celtic tiger in 2008. They have never experienced anything like the current uncertainty and the inability to know what will or will not happen.

I also call on this Government to put in place a strong stimulus package to allow SMEs to bounce back post Covid-19. This package needs to be bold and radical and needs to be something that will work. These SMEs are the backbone of our economy. Recent OECD reports suggest some 92% of businesses in this State have fewer than ten employees. That clearly shows that microbusinesses are the heart of our economy. Over 70% of our workforce is employed by SMEs. If that does not show the need for a real stimulus package, I do not know what would.

As discussed by my colleague, Deputy O'Reilly, when she spoke on the Bill yesterday, Sinn Féin proposes that repayments on these loans be paused for at least 12 months. Businesses that were struggling with cash flow problems even before the onset of Covid-19 need these breaks if they are to be viable. We need to follow countries like the UK, which is providing similar stimulus packages at more affordable rates of repayment. We need to support these businesses, not cripple them with further debt as they try to reopen.

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