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

I welcome the Deputy's support for the increase in the national minimum wage and her call for us to go further through the introduction of a living wage. I acknowledge that businesses are facing rising costs from many different angles, whether it is from the costs of labour, materials or energy and fuel. The budget had several measures to help. These included the extension of the 9% rate of VAT until the end of February.

Crucially, the temporary business energy support scheme, which we are legislating for in the Houses at present, will refund approximately 40% of the increase in the cost of energy to businesses up to €10,000 a month.

However, there are constraints. We need to be honest with people about that. This is taxpayers' money. It is over €1 billion in ordinary taxpayers' money helping businesses with their energy bills. Another €1 billion in loans is being guaranteed by ordinary taxpayers to help businesses with their bills, and rightly so. Businesses are taxpayers too and they employ people who are taxpayers, but it is still well over €2 billion in financial support being provided to businesses only between now and the end of February. It is not a small amount of money. We need to be honest with people that we will not be able to fully cover the increase in their bills. We are limited by EU state aid rules, which only allow us to refund 30% of the difference. We are pushing for 40%, which is higher. It will not be possible to go beyond that and we need to be honest about that. Anyone calling for measures going beyond that is not making an honest call.

I deal and engage with businesses all over the country all the time. I talk to individuals who are in business. They regularly give me copies of their electricity bills and gas bills, as the Deputy can imagine, so that I can see for myself what the increases are. In most cases, they are double and treble. I engage with the business groups headquartered here in Dublin but also chambers of commerce around the country.

Something I am struck by, whether it is the chamber of commerce in Dublin or the chamber of commerce in Dungarvan that I met on Friday last, is that the biggest issue still coming up is the difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. It is as big an issue, if not a bigger issue, than energy costs. We need to ask ourselves as a Government, as a Parliament and as custodians of taxpayers' money, if there are lots of businesses that cannot get staff at all, are doing well but cannot get staff, have to close early because they cannot get staff, or sometimes cannot open six or seven days a week because they cannot get staff, does it make sense to use a considerable amount of taxpayers' money to subsidise businesses that are not doing so well? We have to be realistic about these matters.

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