Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is because they are grouped that this anomaly arises. I will take the increased cost of doing business grant first, and we will deal with the flooding one separately.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 2 and 3 together. The Government and I were conscious, in the negotiations for the budget, that many small businesses around the country are facing increased costs. Some of them are linked to correct Government policy, with regard to improving working conditions for people, increasing minimum wage, extending sick pay and looking at pension provision. These are all important changes to make work pay, but they also result in increased costs of employing people and running businesses. We were anxious to respond to that in a direct way. Last year there was a big announcement to support businesses with the cost of energy - the TBESS scheme. This year we have learned some lessons from that. While it was an important and useful scheme, I wanted to make sure that virtually every small business in the country would get an injection of cash in the first quarter of next year, recognising the multitude of costs they are managing and grappling with. We got agreement from Government to spend €250 million on this scheme, which is not insubstantial. It is approximately twice the amount of money spent on TBESS in the past 12 months. We wanted to do it in a way that did not involve a bureaucratic application process in terms of form filling and so on. We wanted to find a way of calculating how we could give money to businesses based on their size, turnover, activity, employment levels and so on. We have decided to use what businesses pay in rates as a rough indicator of their size of business activity. In the form of a grant through local authorities in the first quarter of next year we will give up to 50% of what businesses would have paid in rates this year. This is not a rates waiver or discount. It is a grant, separate to the rates system. The amount of grant given to businesses is being calculated linked to what they would have paid in rates this year. We think that is a reasonable indicator as to the size and activity of the business. I want to make sure that more than 90% of rate paying businesses get paid. What we announced on budget day was that the scheme would be roughly designed so that businesses paying up to €20,000 in rates this year would all get that payment. We are now looking at a bit more flexibility for businesses that are just above that figure. Either way, in and around 95% of rate paying businesses will be covered by this support scheme. That is the vast majority of businesses in Ireland, and virtually all of the small to medium-sized businesses that have a business premises because they are paying rates. The reason we chose rates is because the energy costs in particular, as well as insurance and other things, attached to running a business from a business premises means those businesses have more costs to take account of.

We hope to be able to get payments out in the first couple of months of the new year through local authorities. There will be virtually no application process required for the businesses.

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