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

We are very reliant on the local authorities to get this payment out as quickly as possible. They have been hugely helpful. The CCMA and the LGMA have been very helpful. This was a big ask of them with very little notice, in truth. We put this scheme in place at budget time. It involved a lot of money going out to a lot of businesses in a relatively short space of time and it became very clear that we could not do it before the end of the year, which we would have liked to do. What the local authorities and the Department of housing, which has also been very helpful, have said is that they would endeavour to get it out in the first quarter of this year and that is still the target. However, there are lots of moving parts involved in making that happen which is why we are putting a service level agreement in place. That will be finalised shortly. My understanding is that letters should go out by the middle of February confirming bank account details and active businesses with a view to getting payments out before the end of the first quarter, or at least a lot of the payments, and if there are any further payments outstanding, they will be made very shortly after that. We are trying to get these payments done in the first quarter of this year for all the reasons that Deputies have rightly outlined, including the pressure that many businesses, particularly those in specific sectors like cafés and restaurants, are feeling at the moment. I have met a lot of business owners over the last number of weeks, as have the Ministers of State in this Department.

More generally, I do not think we should be questioning some of the policy decisions that are resulting in increased costs to businesses. Is anybody suggesting that we should backtrack on the increase in the minimum wage to €12.70? Is anybody seriously suggesting that we should not go from three to five days statutory sick pay, when we are actually only catching up with other countries around Europe? Is anyone suggesting that we should not plan for auto-enrolment in terms of pension provision for the future? Is anybody considering that we should go backwards in terms of parental leave? All of these things are the right things to do but there is a cost to employers as a result of them and we need to respond to that, from a policy point of view. The Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, has been hugely helpful in this regard in the context of working with Revenue. We are now going to treat warehoused debt with a lot more flexibility and with zero interest. This will enable businesses to manage that debt out into the future. My Department is considering what else it can do to assist businesses that are under pressure from a cost base point of view to remain competitive and to stay afloat this year.

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