Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is very difficult to make a substantial contribution to a budget debate in five minutes. There was a time when Members took hours to analyse the impact of a budget and I regret this is no longer the case. As someone who has some experience of budgets, yesterday's announcement was by any measure an extraordinary one. It included the provision of €17 billion in expenditure and €20 billion in borrowing next year to add to the €20 billion borrowed this year. The consensus on the budget, from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, to the most fiscally conservative commentators, is that this is what is required to be done. Any previous Minister would be extraordinarily envious of the spending capacity of the Ministers standing up today and yesterday but certainly would not be envious of the circumstances in which this money needs to be deployed.

It is interesting that socialism for capitalists seems now to be very much in vogue. It is quite amazing that many people who, for as long as I am in politics, have argued for a smaller state and the supremacy of the market now recognise that, ultimately, it is the state that is the bulwark of the people's security and safety in a time of crisis. I hope this appreciation of public investment in public services and of the labour of those involved in delivering those services is a permanent change. We cannot simply revert back to normal practice when this awful set of crises passes. The Government and this House will deploy a wall of money to address the twin unprecedented challenges of this awful pandemic and Brexit. It is to be hoped that the money will have the desired effect. The Labour Party would have picked different mechanisms for the deployment of that money, as my colleague, Deputy Nash, set out in detail yesterday, and we will have an opportunity in the coming weeks to do the analysis and set out alternatives.

I have only time in the two and a half minutes remaining to me to raise one issue. There is a consensus in this House that the sector most egregiously affected by the pandemic to date is the hospitality sector. I received an email today from the owner of one of the most important hospitality businesses in my constituency of Wexford. In it, he states:

It is great news for VAT but useless if we have no business. The current level 3 restrictions have more or less closed the hospitality industry. It makes much more sense to support us with the EWSS and to avoid a situation where [in his case] 240 extra employees will be put on the pandemic unemployment payment.

This is a very important issue. The qualification criterion for the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, is that one must have a 30% depreciation in one's income, month on month, from July to December.

In a constituency such as Wexford, July and August were actually very good months and they will not qualify although the businesses are collapsed now. Businesses like the one in contact with me are faced with a stark choice of losing their business and putting people on the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, or qualifying. I appeal to the Minister not to have a strict mathematical formula for this but to have flexibility. In the case of this particular business of 240 employees, if the PUP is paid it will cost the State €72,000 per week, whereas if the wage subsidy scheme is paid it will cost €48,000 per week. People would still be in work and attached to their businesses, and they would be generating VAT for the State.

I can say very little in the few minutes I have, but that is my one appeal to the Minister of State. I ask that he would go back to Revenue and to the Minister for Finance to ask that businesses such as this will not be forced to make the impossible decision to close their businesses, having survived to date, when it makes no economic or social sense to do so.

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