Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is a very positive Bill that provides a legislative basis for the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and of course the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to enter into an agreement with IBRC so they can implement the Brexit impact loan scheme. Once launched, it is intended the scheme will open up to SMEs and those that employ up to 499 people. It will provide loans ranging from €25,000 to €1.5 million.

We mush consider this is the context of May 2021. We certainly hope we as a nation are on the back end of Covid. Vaccinations are on the up and in recent weeks we have had announcements about the easing of restrictions each week. It feels like we are on a slow pathway back to normality. With that there is much hope and expectation but also it means some of what Covid has masked will come to the fore again. Each and every day of the past week we have heard stories of the housing crisis and the need to house families is back on the airwaves. At the same time we are also going to see just how impacted by Brexit businesses have been, because Covid has been masking all that. We have been in a bubble world for the past 14 or 15 months, with a lot of businesses closed and cotton wool wrapped around them by means of State support and subvention. Suddenly, they are about to reopen. They will be supported and the Taoiseach has said time and again there will be no cliff edge; businesses will be supported until they are back on an even keel. Notwithstanding that, we have had a perfect storm over the past 12 months with Brexit and Covid coming together and wreaking havoc on our country and large swathes of the European Union. We do not yet know what impact Brexit will have on a lot of our SMEs, so what we are passing enables Government, the Civil Service and financial institutions to start rolling out this very important capital loan which will recapitalise businesses that are struggling and will continue to struggle. It is a good thing therefore and Fianna Fáil in Government fully support this Bill right through to its enactment.

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