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

"Viable-vulnerable" is a commonly used term when it comes to the various schemes we have. It is designed to ensure we do not provide taxpayers' money to businesses that we know will fail, regardless of what support they receive. We take a liberal approach, which sometimes involves supporting businesses that cannot succeed, but we err on the side of supporting a business or protecting jobs any time we can. For example, we provided the sustaining enterprise fund during the pandemic. We will have something similar for the energy crisis. We would expect businesses receiving large amounts of taxpayers' money to present a plan to show how they will survive, bounce back and reduce their energy costs if they can. That does not apply to every scheme. For example, in the commercial rates waiver we did not ask businesses to prove whether they were viable, but when it comes to other schemes we will. That is for a very good reason; to make sure we do not give hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of taxpayers' money to a company that does not have a realistic plan.

See this speech in context