Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I refer to the period 1 and period 2 described in this section. Tax warehousing was critical where businesses could not access credit from their banking institutions and it was the only way they could get cash liquidity to pull them over. Can period 1, the restricted trading phase, be extended to when businesses are actually reopening? That is when they could do with a cash injection or have the tax warehousing available to them to help with liquidity as other bills come in.

The interest phase of the warehousing is one of the options that does not cost the Government anything. We are only deferring the payment from the business. Revenue is trying to charge almost 0.5% or 0.25% over and above what is being charged by the commercial banks under other schemes. Will the Minister of State look at both of the issues, first that the period would not be the restricted trading only but also the reopening period and, second, the interest charged on the warehousing of that tax, which is currently 3%? We can get a commercially better rate on the market.