Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Regional Group for bringing forward this motion. It is timely and we support the principles within it, although our approach to resolving these issues may be somewhat different. For more than a year, Sinn Féin and, in particular, Deputy O'Reilly have been highlighting the crisis facing SMEs, particularly in the hospitality and retail sectors. In the city of Cork, we have seen a slew of long-established and well-regarded businesses close in the city centre. Since Christmas, we have seen the closure of Tung Sing, which had been there for 60 years, Pigalle, Twilight News and Nash 19. They were all forced to shut their doors because they cannot afford to trade in the city centre. In the first instance, my thoughts are with the staff and their families. This will have been a devastating blow to them. These are a great loss to the city and their closure raises serious questions regarding the hospitality sector across the State, as well as specifically in Cork.

There are many viable but vulnerable businesses that have tried to keep going and keep afloat but that have struggled with warehoused debt, including tax debt. It has been our view for some time that some of these debts needed to be elongated with more time given to businesses to repay those debts. At the eleventh hour, the Government responded to those calls from Sinn Féin and from business and announced that the interest rate on tax debt would be cut to 0% and that Revenue would take a flexible approach to repayments, on a case-by-case basis. We welcome that but this decision could have been arrived at earlier.

It is also the case that many of the supports that are available to businesses are too difficult to access. One of the biggest issues businesses raise with me is the cost of energy, which has skyrocketed. Some businesses are extremely energy-intensive. I refer to things like dry cleaners and beauty salons. These businesses can be very small but still use a great deal of energy. Some of the supports, including the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS, are too difficult to access. TBESS has been a failure. There had been a budget of €1.3 billion but there was an underspend of €1 billion. That is an enormous shortfall. The scheme is too cumbersome and difficult to access and it is much harder for small and medium businesses, which comprise the majority of hospitality businesses, to avail of. We had hoped that the underspend would be reprofiled and distributed to struggling SMEs but that money was returned to the Exchequer and lost to business.

The response of the Government to the cost-of-doing-business crisis facing the SME sector has been ineffectual and a significant frustration for businesses. It is essential that the sector receive adequate support and attention because of its importance to employment levels and the addition of value and its social and economic importance. We need to see the Government listening to and implementing our proposals to ensure that our towns, villages and city centres are the destinations we want them to be.

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