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

As the Deputy knows, in addition to the establishing the Red Cross compensation scheme, we instructed Microfinance Ireland to work with businesses to try to put low-cost loans of up to €25,000 in place to help them from a cashflow point of view. I know that does not necessarily cover some of the questions the Deputy asked but it is worth raising. It is important to say that this is a humanitarian assistance scheme. We have given the Red Cross as much flexibility as we can but there must be qualification criteria. This is not a case of, essentially, the State picking up the tab for businesses that cannot be insured entirely. That would be a dangerous precedent to set and a dangerous signal to send to the insurance industry. We expect it to play its part too.

We know that people in some parts of the country simply cannot get insurance as a result of historical flooding or flood risk. When flooding hits those communities, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has to respond from a humanitarian point of view for households, families, etc., and my Department, working with the Red Cross, provides humanitarian assistance for businesses. This is by far the biggest application of that scheme since it was established ten years ago. Eleven million euro is a significant amount of money. The vast majority of applicants are in County Cork. Under the enhanced scheme, the amount businesses can get has increased fivefold. We have to learn lessons and try to improve the scheme if we can. We can look at things like under-insurance but it has to be a case of businesses not being able to get more insurance, as opposed to choosing only to insure stock and relying, potentially, on a Red Cross-type scheme to provide insurance for building premises or whatever. This is not a Red Cross insurance scheme, it is a humanitarian scheme that tries to help businesses get back on their feet.

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