Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would also like to welcome the Minister of State, Deputy English, to the House. I always enjoy his contributions because he is always so well prepared and can articulate what is being done in a clear, simple way in which people can understand. Communication is important in these areas because it can be quite technical.

I, too, would like to welcome that we are moving further down the line of easing restrictions. It is a great day when we see so many people back to work with non-essential retail opening.I wish the people in County Clare who are returning to work today for the first time since before Christmas the very best of luck and good fortune. It is great to see the main streets of our towns throughout County Clare open again and people going in and out of shops. Shopping online was very convenient, and in some ways essential, during the most recent lockdown and people got into the habit of shopping online. However, I encourage and appeal to people to now shop in person and go back into the shops because these are the businesses that pay rates, create employment and sponsor our GAA teams and community events. These are the people who need our support. Some of them operated click and collect services and some set up websites and tried to adapt to social media to sell their products. That is great and I welcome the supports the local enterprise offices gave businesses to embrace social media and new technologies. Sadly, many products were bought from Amazon, the multiples and companies abroad. Unfortunately, when selling tickets for the local GAA lotto, Amazon is nowhere to be found to buy lines or support football teams when they get to county finals and so on. We need to shop local in order to support local and protect local.

While this may be a technical Bill, it is an extremely important one. I love the Titles of technical Bills because they are there for a reason and they knit things together. Brexit has not gone away but it has been sidelined in the narrative because of the pandemic. Thousands of businesses are affected by Brexit and, as has been said already, getting credit is a lifeline for businesses. They cannot make a sale unless they can afford to pay for the cost of the sale and, sadly, the cost of the sale has to be funded before the money comes in from it. This Bill will unlock a very important stream of funding for those businesses.

I am delighted that credit unions will now be involved in partnering with the State to make funding available because sometimes they are the only source of support for small businesses. They have a greater role to play, especially now with the consolidation of financial institutions and two major banks withdrawing from the market. It is critical that the credit union's role in society is enhanced and supported. That is a welcome feature of the Bill.

The agricultural industry, whether direct farming or businesses associated with agriculture, will now be able to benefit from this fund as well. That is very welcome because agrifood, agribusiness and agriculture in general is one of the biggest industries in this country, if not the biggest. This Bill will eliminate some of the red tape and open funding up to more businesses to benefit from it. The Minister of State's commitment that further funding, as well as easing and reducing of administration and red tape, will be made available if necessary to ensure the credit flows to the businesses that need it, is very welcome.

I again thank the Minister of State sincerely, on behalf of all businesses in this country, for the work he and the Tánaiste are doing to ensure businesses are supported, retained and allowed to flourish going forward. That is very important. While many businesses suffered during the pandemic, and sadly some no longer exist, we have succeeded through the State's interventions during the pandemic in retaining a lot of businesses and ensuring they have the platform and funding they need to prosper.With Brexit, it is only in the future we will realise the extent to which it has an effect on our businesses. However, similar to the pandemic, with proper interventions and with flexible ones, whereby we can change or alter something if we need to, as we are doing today, businesses will certainly be equipped to survive and adapt to the new Brexit reality.