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

I thank the Deputy. We have had schemes of that nature in the past. We had the temporary wage subsidy scheme and the employment wage subsidy scheme. Those schemes were valuable at a particular point during the pandemic. They were also extremely expensive and cost billions of euros. There was a great deal of criticism of companies availing of the schemes at the time. Let us not forget that. This is not something that we rule out doing in the future, but it is not in our immediate plans. Let us not forget that many Members of the opposite benches were very critical of those schemes because, in many cases, profitable companies availed of them. We need to bear that and the fact that they came at a considerable cost to the taxpayer in mind.

I do not know if the company applied for the Ukraine energy crisis scheme. That scheme was established by the Government to have large companies with their energy costs. Companies can get several million euros from the scheme. I do not know if the company applied for that in this case. It is a fair question, and I will check that out. I understand, from what I have been told, that the scale of the losses the company was facing was so enormous that even a scheme like that would not been adequate.

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