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

I thank the Deputies for their questions and their advocacy on behalf of small businesses and the retail and hospitality industry in their constituencies. I agree a response of scale is required. I cannot put a figure on that now. It may not be possible to put a figure on it, because we just do not know how long this situation will continue. We probably will be able to put a figure on it for this year, but I am not sure about next year. That will depend on how things develop. The objective, however, is clear: it is to protect viable but vulnerable businesses from failing and to protect the jobs of the people who work in those businesses. There must be an adequate response, because if there is not such a response, then there is no point in having a response at all. I would rather spend enough and achieve what I want to achieve than spend a lot and not achieve what we need to achieve. This is going to be our guiding principle.

This is a very different crisis from Covid-19. When the virus arrived in Ireland, we were talking about somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 deaths if we did not act the way we did. The response to the Covid-19 pandemic, of course, was not just about providing money to people and businesses; it was also about taking away people's freedoms. This is a very different crisis. We will not be doing things like that, for example. It is, though, comparable in some ways. It is comparable in respect of the anxiety and fear people have when it comes to being able to pay the bills. It is also comparable in respect of the uncertainty, because people just do not know how bad this crisis will be or how long it is going to go on. This is why it does require a comparable response.

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