Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Even before the pandemic, there was a churn in businesses and, in any given year, some businesses close and new businesses are established. In fact, businesses that would have closed anyway perhaps survived because of the measures that we took in regard to the wage subsidy scheme and so on. We expect that when the wage subsidy scheme and the other financial supports are withdrawn, and they are being withdrawn over the next couple of months, we will see some of those non-viable businesses fail, and that is inevitable. One of the effects of that, though, will be freeing up employees to work in businesses that are viable. We have a huge issue at the moment, which the Deputy mentioned, of people in certain sectors who are unable to get staff yet we are subsidising employment in businesses that are no longer viable. When that happens, I think we will see a certain churn in the economy and the labour market of people moving into those businesses that actually are viable.

Obviously, our objective is to save any business that can be saved. I do not have numbers on the small company administrative rescue process, SCARP, yet because it is only new. There are the existing mechanisms such as examinership and so on, but we think SCARP is a much better one and we are only starting to see the first few companies coming through that.

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