Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have supported the Government stepping in when it needed to, to ensure that businesses were given adequate supports to survive in the last period. We supported this absolute necessity, whether through the pandemic wage subsidy scheme, replaced by the employment wage subsidy scheme, and the pandemic unemployment payment. We need to ensure that we have these protections. As much as we thought in recent weeks that we were moving to a better place, which we might still be overall, it has stalled. As we have had the dreaded Delta variant, we need Government action to deal with the variant versus the vaccination scenario. There are new guidelines from the national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, regarding young people and use of the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines. We need to ensure that the timelines are sped up as soon as possible to facilitate this.

While we all welcomed the Covid restrictions support scheme, at the time a significant number of businesses fell between stools and missed out on those necessary supports. We knew there were issues with those people who did not necessarily pay rates and may have had non-rateable offices but still had significant overheads. I think in particular of companies with substantial numbers of vehicles, insurance and other costs. Many were lucky and were close to going to the wall. I had considerable interaction with the Minister of State, Deputy English, and I brought examples to him, the Tánaiste and others of firms in Dundalk and throughout County Louth that were impacted in this way. The small business assistance scheme and the business resumption support scheme could be the solution for many of these businesses. We need to ensure that that happens.

Deputy Doherty and a number of other Members from Sinn Féin have pointed out the elephant in the room, which is the fact that we are still dealing with a housing crisis. We are not dealing with the issue of investment funds pricing regular people out of business. We have a stamp duty percentage that just does not cut the mustard. We need the Government to get real but we need to ensure that we have an adequate response for those businesses, families and people who need the supports as we continue through this period.

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