Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The number of insolvencies is up 38% across the first three quarters of this year and, therefore, that indicates some businesses are going to find themselves in trouble. I welcome the clarification that if they are in arrears or if they have a requirement, as long as they are in an arrangement with the local authority, they can still apply. The sum of €250 million divided by 140,000 works out at an average of €1,785 per business. I am still not clear how this is going to be paid in terms of when they are going to receive the money and how it is going to be decided. I echo the call for a really detailed public information campaign to get to people because whatever the Minister says about the TBESS, it did not work due to the cost of doing business and the cost of energy. He is correct that some people had hedged but not that many. The cost of energy went through the roof. When I spoke to people, some of them said that initially they thought they might need to hire an accountant to be able to get into the process, which was unnecessarily complicated. I hope this one will not be.

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