Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I read the Bill. Now they can go back to work if the employer sustains a 70% loss between 1 July and 31 December 2020. Those seasonal businesses could have lost, as they did lose, the entirety of the first half of the year's business. If they do not lose more than 30% of the second half of the year, they are not entitled to access the employment wage subsidy scheme. That means that unless those seasonal businesses lose more than 65% of their business over the entire 12 months, they are not entitled to the employment wage subsidy scheme, as the temporary wage subsidy scheme has become. I have read the Bill and I invite the Minister to tell me I am wrong in that. I invite him to tell me that a business does not have to lose more than 30% of its normal income crucially from 1 July so that any losses it has incurred up to 1 July will not qualify it. I invite the Minister to tell me I am wrong.

Many of those seasonal enterprises are bars and restaurants. I invite the Minister to compare how those small family-run firms are being treated with how the meat plants are being treated. I see Deputy O'Donoghue here. Representatives from the meat plants informed the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response that they had availed of the temporary wage subsidy scheme. Good for them. Of course, they availed of it. They avail of everything because they screw everybody. I know the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is new to the job. I had to check this yesterday in a different context. Apparently "screw" is not unparliamentary language. They screwed their workers. They did not allow them sick pay. People were showing up even though they had symptoms because they were afraid not to show up for work.

They screwed the farmers in what they paid them because they dropped the price beef well below the cost of production. Up to recently they were killing up to 95% of the numbers they killed last year according to Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine figures. Despite all of that, they were availing of the temporary wage subsidy scheme, but small seasonal businesses up and down the west coast could not avail of the scheme. In this Bill the Minister proposes to lock them out for the remainder of the year by failing to take into account the losses they incurred in the first half of 2020. They incurred those losses because the Government shut them, and rightly so. I do not take issue with that. The Government told them they had to close their doors in the national interest, and most of them did it without question. However, now when it is time to look at the bigger picture, they are being forgotten yet again.

There was considerable criticism of the Government of which the Minister for Finance was a member up to a few weeks ago over its complete inability to understand the economy outside Dublin or the importance of seasonal work in the tourism sector, in particular throughout the west of Ireland, and to understand farmers. I invite the Minister to look beyond the M50 and allow seasonal businesses to access to the employment wage subsidy scheme, as it is called. If they are required to demonstrate a loss of more than 30% in the second half of this year, effectively they are required to demonstrate a loss of more than 65% over the entire year.

I have read the Bill and I do not need to be patronised about reading Bills. I read it as I read all Bills, as I read the statutory instrument that made general guidance in respect of the population a law in respect of those who are in receipt of social welfare payments, be they the pandemic unemployment payment or jobseeker's allowance.

Of course, we are frequently talking about the same group of people. We are talking about people who were put out of work in the national interest. Many of them were put out of work by the actions of the Government, actions that were necessary. Now it is time to do what is necessary to get those people back up and running. A man who was in my class in school brought his horses to the gate of Leinster House. He is an incredibly hard-working man who built up a business that is reliant on foreign tourism which has been shut down by the Government. I believe the Minister is the chairman of the Eurogroup. Ireland is unique in Europe in how we have shut down travel. That man no longer has a business. He rang me yesterday to ask what was in the stimulus package for him because he could not see anything. I listened to him and said, "No, Seán. There's nothing in it for you. Sorry." He will be able to demonstrate 30% losses for the rest of the year, but many businesses will not. Those businesses that will not have 30% losses for the rest of the year would have losses in excess of 50% over the year. I ask the Minister to include them in a spirit of fairness and solidarity to get this country up and running again, not just the part of the country the Minister and the Cabinet represent, but the rest of the country that deserves the same chances.

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