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

I thank the Deputy. As I think I said earlier in reply to another Deputy, the Government appreciates that a lot of businesses are under pressure from rising costs, particularly those in the hospitality sector. There is help on the way in terms of a €250 million in grants that the Government will be pumping into small businesses before the end of March to help with bills and cash flow. The debt warehousing scheme remains in place. Also, we are seeing energy prices falling for business, which is encouraging too.

But I do need to be straight about this. We have a lot of businesses that in the last three or four years have become largely dependent on Government support, whether that was in the context of Covid-19 when we helped to pay the wages and the overheads, the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS, when we helped to pay the energy bills or the temporary low VAT rate of 9%. These things cannot go on forever. We are going to monitor the situation very carefully because we will have to see if there is a fall in employment, which we will have to respond to, or if the number of business closures is above the long-term trend average, which is 50 per 10,000.

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