Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy again for pointing out the challenges and some of the solutions. I absolutely agree with her that we need to do more. We are clear about that. We are at the end of the lifetime of this Government and it will be up to political parties to bring forward their ideas, reflected in their manifestos, in the weeks ahead and ask the people to adjudicate on what we have done in the past few years.

Front and central is that we have to try to support the backbone of the economy, which is small family businesses. The Deputy is right to point out that hospitality has been vulnerable and we have seen a significant number of closures, but we have also seen new hospitality businesses opening. One of the key things I would love to get across to sectoral representatives is that we need to work with developing businesses. It is easy to point out the number of businesses that have closed without reflecting on those that have opened. Critically, how do we make existing businesses that are going through pressure aware that there are supports, they can change the dial and absolutely change the cost base they are operating in by trying to bring in new energy efficiency measures which can, in the first instance, reduce utility bills. As I said in my earlier contribution, the best way of giving businesses money is not to take if from them in the first place. We have a lot of schemes for doing that and I have done a lot of work in the past three weeks to try to lower the conditions attached to each of them to make it easier for applicants to apply. For SMEs, time is the most valuable resource and we want to support them to get the support they need to trade successfully in the months and weeks ahead.

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