Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That information was, indeed, provided to me by way of reply to a parliamentary question but that ought not to be the case. That information should be regularly available.

Sadly, the point I am making seems to be lost on the Minister of State. We have spent over €10 billion on an objectively successful wage subsidy scheme. Nobody is saying otherwise. The scheme has been objectively successful in doing what it was initially designed to do. Everybody accepts and understands that. What I am asking is that as the scheme winds down, given the scale of the resources allocated during the lifetime of the TWSS and the successor EWSS, we require a comprehensive, detailed report into the operation of the scheme from the point of view of probity and financial transparency on that significant transfer of resources from the Exchequer to private enterprise and on to workers. That is not too much to ask. It is a reasonable request. That is the kind of assessment we need to inform public policy-making into the future because we do not know when we will require an intervention such as this again.

I remember arguing in another House following the Brexit vote that we would require a form of wage subsidy scheme that was being floated by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and others in response to the shock that Brexit might present to our economy, and especially specific sectors. I have been making the case, for example, for a German-style wage subsidy scheme with various conditions attached that would be a permanent feature of the labour market to help us to deal with any shocks that may arise in the future and that we cannot anticipate. From a public policy point of view and from a financial transparency and probity point of view, I fundamentally believe that an initiative such as this is required and that it should be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas and debated here given the scale of the resources that, as I said, were transferred from the Exchequer to private enterprise and on to workers.

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