Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I reassure him that there is no tactic or strategy here to try to claw back revenue or anything like that. That is not motivating any actions on the part of the Revenue Commissioners at all. As the Deputy will be aware, between March and August 66,500 firms received payments under the TWSS. This amounts to approximately one third of all employers from 2019. Over 664,000 jobs have been directly supported over the period, and many more indirectly. The whole objective was to protect the viability of businesses and the jobs within those businesses and to enable them to come through this Covid period intact. That remains the objective of the scheme. It was originally meant to be in place for 12 weeks but was then extended until the end of the summer.

Then we moved into the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, phase. As a result of the novel situation around the reopening of the economy in the summer, we had to close down again. Changes were also made to the scheme to allow additional flexibility for employers.

In terms of the issues the Deputy has raised, he is correct that the subsidy was targeted at otherwise viable employers. As he stated, they are people who have never defaulted before. They had to demonstrate a 25% reduction in turnover during the second period of 2020. It was administered on a self-assessment basis whereby employers make a declaration to Revenue as to their eligibility for the scheme. Such declarations are subject to compliance checks by Revenue to ensure that the considerable sums given to employers under the scheme were in accordance with the provisions set down in legislation. Employers had to be able to show to the satisfaction of Revenue that the negative disruption led to a minimum of 25% of a decline in actual or predicted turnover. Considerable guidance was issued on the scheme, including Revenue's expectation that any employer availing of the scheme should be able to produce supporting documentation in respect of certain criteria if and when requested to do so, the overall principle being, of course, that Exchequer funds are targeted at genuine cases that meet the criteria. As with any area of tax compliance, it is very much in the interests of businesses to review their own behaviour and approach Revenue to resolve matters voluntarily before compliance action is taken.

The temporary wage subsidy scheme, TWSS, is under the care and management of the Revenue Commissioners, who are independent of Government in the administration of the scheme. Revenue has continued to work with employers and to take a practical and pragmatic approach to the administration of the scheme while also ensuring that it is fairly and consistently administered across all employers and in line with legislation. That said, the example and illustration raised by the Deputy is an interesting one in terms of an initiative taken by the employer who probably was not in a position to predict how well the online part of the business would go and is now in difficulty. I will raise the issues with the Minister for Finance who may, in turn, present them to Revenue just to evaluate the scheme, ascertain how frequent these issues are and what is the rate of such cases.

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