Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the Bill. The making of these amendments to the Credit Guarantee Act 2012 to support the needs of businesses to access additional finance is very important. According to the Government, it is in response to the economic difficulties resulting from the aggression against Ukraine by Russia and the spill, as we would call it, from that, as well as the shock wave effect it is having on economies and the cost of energy, fuel and gas throughout Europe and the rest of the world and the detrimental effect it is having on so many people's lives.

That is outside of the human side, which is outside all the financial side. Sometimes, when we are in the Chamber talking about finances and economies, we have to remember the real people who are affected by the Ukrainian war and the invasion of Ukraine, including the moms, dads, children and grandparents who are being put out of their homes and are being bombed, killed and maimed. We have to remember those people today and think of them in a sincere way and we then of course have to deal with the knock-on effects of what is happening. We have to deal with the day-to-day trouble we have and businesses have in financing their day-to-day operations.

I will talk about the problems we have. It is timely because today, Deputy Mattie McGrath and I, as well as the others in the Rural Independent Group met senior officials from the ESB. I was glad to have a meaningful engagement with them. I was grateful for their time, as were the others. It was meaningful, in that they gave us an insight into the way they perceive the situation and they have all been around for a while now. They are not Johnny-come-latelies to the job but are experienced people. They gave us the benefit of their knowledge, which I appreciated. What it tells me, however, is that the hope we have with regard to energy for this winter is like everything in life. It is a case of "What if?", "Hopefully" and "I wonder". That is what we are really relying on because, first of all, we are hoping it will not be too cold. At the same time, we are hoping there will be a bit of wind that will keep the turbines going. If we really start to think about this, these are the things we need to happen in order that ESB prices will stay affordable in such a way that businesses will not have to close. I will say again that we have to hope for a bit of wind and we have to hope and pray that it will not get too cold because if those two things happen, that is, if we have calm weather and it gets very cold, it will be detrimental to the Irish people, to families and to businesses, be they large, small or medium, because the price of energy will absolutely go through the roof. We looked at a graph today on exactly what has been happening over the past four months. The one thing that has made the graph on cost come down over recent weeks is the fact that it is mild outside. If it was cold and if usage of energy went up, we would be crucified by the price of it. We are crucified as it is.

I have an insight into the running of a small business - I have a small shop - the massive increase in ESB bills and the fact we are all now in this situation. I talk about "mom's purse" a lot, by which I mean the mom who has to balance the household budget on a Friday evening. When mom or the businessperson has to dread opening an ESB bill, something is radically wrong. When we go back over different times, whether it was during the 1980s and the slump we had at that time or during the crash of the property bubble and all that, even at that time, people did not dread the ESB bill but now they do. They are really afraid of it. I spoke today with a master butcher from County Kerry who went into great detail about what is happening in his business. It is frightening because of the massive energy usage by his business. Yesterday, I spoke with the proprietor of a large retail outlet. Sometimes, when people hear of a large business owner they think they are flying but if 80 or 90 people are working in a place, it might not be flying. It means the business owner has an awful lot of people to keep going, an awful lot of responsibilities and the bills are multiplied in accordance with the number of employees he or she has. The more turnover a person has, the bigger the bills are. It is like a vicious circle. Equally, the smaller person is crucified because he or she does not have enough turnover.

The world of business today is very difficult. That is why the credit guarantee scheme and the amendments that are being made to it are important. I know myself that when you are in trouble with a business, you have to be able to access finance. No one of us in this world has enough money to run the show or to progress. If you are in the business of creating employment, you cannot do it on your own. You need support. I am sorry to say that our pillar banks certainly do not do enough. I have spoken to people in the banks. I hate fighting about the banks because, to be blunt about it, I have to deal with them an awful lot. That is one of the reasons I do not like fighting about them but I realise the constraints that are on them. From talking to the Central Bank, the whole system of lending at present is wrong because no chance is being taken on people who see an ability to do something. Instead of bank managers deciding to take a chance with this man, woman or family and to back them, bank managers no longer have the autonomy to be able to say they have trust or faith in this person and cannot do that any more. It has to be about filling up paperwork and sending it to Dublin and that it must be evaluated.

Many is the time I have said I want to know who is evaluating my application. I want to know who is dealing with it. Who are this team? The one thing you will never be told is that it is so and so and you can pick up the phone and talk to that person. They are faceless, are hiding away in some office in Dublin and you will never get to speak to them whereas, to be fair, long ago there was a system in place whereby people togged themselves out as well as they could, looked as respectable as they could, faced the bank and met a person who was in charge. People literally had to sell themselves and they either were good at it and got on all right or, if they made a bad hand of it, they might have to have another go. They were relying, however, on a person they could look at and deal with but unfortunately that has now gone. That is one of the reasons small businesses find it so difficult to survive.

Not everybody is in the situation of having the big reputation, like the big conglomerates and so on, and can make an application for massive loans and be approved. Sometimes, a loan of a few thousand euro would mean an awful lot. That is why I have so much respect for the likes of the credit unions, which help families and small businesses by giving them loans to help them get to a better day or month and get them over a hump. I know nobody in life who was involved in business who could say they had a great run, never had a problem, and everything always went right for them because that is not the real world. This is especially so when you are self-employed because you will have a good day when you might do great and then you could have a bad week when everything could go wrong. You could say to yourself that if you were doing nothing or anything else, you would be better off. It is like the story of the person who gets up in the morning and works very hard but by the time he or she goes to bed at night, he or she might have done better by staying in bed all day. People cannot do that. They have to get up every day and fight, even if they are on the flat of their back to try to get over the day and do their day's trading. It is difficult.

Business is a lonely place at present. The one thing I would like our businesspeople in this country to think, and our moms and dads with mom's purse on a Friday, is that the Government and the Opposition have their backs and that we understand the difficulties they have. It is very easy to stand up in the Chamber to criticise the Government and say it does not have a clue. I do not want to say that because each member of the Government has families. They might have businesses and many of the difficulties everybody else have. We have to work together as a team. That is all I wanted to say.

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