Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chair. I ask him to remind me when I have spoken for six and half minutes.

I am glad to have an opportunity to make a few points on Brexit and business. I am from the north west of the country, as the Minister knows. Sadly, many businesses in my region are concerned about whether they will make the Brexit deadline in business such is the impact of Covid and our dependency in the north-west region on the hospitality sector. I will come back to that.

In the context of budgetary preparations and with regard to the north-west region, as the Minister will probably know, due to continuing neglect over many decades of investment in the north-west region we have been reclassified from a developed region to a region in transition.

As a result of that, the Government will qualify for up to €350 million in grant aid under the Cohesion Fund, whereby €60 of every €100 committed is payable to the Government by the EU. It is vitally important that we do not repeat the mistake of the period 2014 to 2020 in the next period 2021 to 2026 by reprofiling pipeline projects to take advantage of a funding scheme from the EU. That is not what it is intended for and it will not be the medicine that is required for the illness, which is the lack of improvements in the north-west region to get it to that developed stage which will ensure that counties like Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan are capable of performing to potential and making a contribution to the national effort which is sustainable.

To achieve this the Northern and Western Regional Assembly has appealed to the Government to introduce, and I am supporting it by asking the Minister to ensure that the Government introduces, an integrated territorial investment vehicle to ensure that the EU funding that we qualify for, as I have outlined, is targeted in that region, and that in line with the principle of subsidiarity, those moneys are controlled and made available through the existing apparatus in that region, with the input, obviously, of the Northern and Western Regional Assembly. There is no question that to be creative in accountancy one could probably draw down this money and buy PPE for the north west region with it. We are buying that anyway. I ask that this money is put where it is intended to be, which is to improve the overall region and to allow it to develop.

On the current situation with Brexit, we hope we successfully secure an agreed future relationship so that we do not go totally off the cliff. The reality of this region of the north west and my area is that any Brexit will be a hard Brexit. We have such an interdependency with Northern Ireland and with the export market, together with the fact that we suffer high levels of unemployment already, that it is critically important that we get the money to the people and businesses that need it and prioritise that.

In that context it is very difficult not to talk about the current Covid-19 pandemic. I will give one example again of the hospitality industry. It has been totally wiped out by Covid-19. The superficial suggestion that level 3 plus is supportive of pubs, restaurants or hotels is ridiculous in the extreme. It has got to have been thought up by somebody at a desk who was never in a pub, restaurant or hotel in Ireland because 15 people cannot eat out in the rain and hail or during Storm Alex last weekend. They cannot have pints or Coca-Cola outside in the rain or hail. Within our own county we will not be having staycations for people from Collooney in Sligo town. These businesses need the required level of supports to allow them to survive. Brexit is not even on their list of concerns at this stage. They are worrying about having a future in business at all.

I have seen correspondence from the Tánaiste's office which confirms that the top-up grant of 40% for the restart grant, which was payable to businesses here in Dublin such as pubs and so on, only entitles businesses in Donegal, which have been at level 3 plus for several weeks, to a further 10% on top of the 30%, whereas this would be a net 70% top-up if the pubs were in Dublin. This is being done on the basis that the pubs in Donegal are allowed to open, that is, they are entitled to have 15 people out in the rain. That is just ridiculous. All of these businesses are going to close. There may be an odd exception where a business may have a huge semi-covered deck area which has central heating, but in the main all of these businesses are gone. I ask the Minister, please, to revisit this to ensure that the full top-ups are available to all of the businesses. This applies not just to Donegal, where it has arisen, but also now to all the other 24 counties outside of Dublin. If we are going to support businesses, let us do that.

I very much hope that the Minister can take this on board to ensure that we are giving the appropriate supports, because we have wiped out hospitality as an industry in this region. Unless we take a more strategic approach to managing the Covid-19 situation which permits some level of safe trading for that industry, it is quite simply finished. It is not good enough for us to say that we must do this. "Must" is not an option. We have to protect people's lives, as the Taoiseach has said, and livelihoods. Our plan as outlined at the moment will not achieve this.

See this speech in context