Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply and the officials in Tipperary County Council and the Department who are dealing with the scheme. The Minister gave the reasons he cannot. He wants to spend the money and get it into the pockets of businesspeople who are struggling to keep the doors open. However, there is a considerable cohort that have an arrangement to pay rates as part of their rent. I do not know how we will tweak it, but it needs to be tweaked in some way because those people are very valuable in our towns and villages where they are paying for rateable premises. They need the supports and they are not getting them. The premises owners cannot get them either because they are not operating the businesses. It needs to be tweaked. Leaving it to the leftover fund before sharing or devising some scheme is not good enough. The scheme is more than a year old. I welcome the extension to 29 May and encourage all businesses to apply or to try to in any case. However, we must sort out this anomaly. We cannot leave it to the chance that money will be left over and we might tweak it then. It has to be tweaked. As the Minister will be aware, there are numerous businesses in his constituency and mine that rent premises, operate their businesses on that basis and the owners pay the rates. We need to tweak it immediately.

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