Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that we have experience through the Covid-19 period as to what is necessary and we are going to have to do that at least but I hope the Department may be in a position to prepare for that worst-case scenario because it is going to need to have some plans in place that, hopefully, it will not have to revert to. If we have a situation where businesses go under and unemployment increasing, that is a winter that none of us really want to face into. As I have said, many of these businesses have been wounded during the Covid-19 period. Some of them came out of the financial crash ten years ago, Covid-19 has hurt them deeply and now they are facing into this. We do not want to see businesses struggling but, if they do survive, doing so on the basis of laying people off. While I understand that none of us can predict how long this is going to last or how deep it is going to be, we nonetheless need to give some comfort to businesses and to workers that they will not be left alone and stranded by any Government or potential Government scheme.

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