Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House to discuss the Finance (Covid-19 and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022. As Senator Kyne said, let us hope that the term "Covid-19" is in our rear-view mirror and is not to return again. As the Senator said also, when we look back, we will see what the Government did with the significant supports it gave businesses to survive during the last two years was, in fact, incredible, which most in the business community will acknowledge. While we did not get everything right, we got the majority of things right. The pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, was able to sustain people. Much credit must be given to the Government in respect of how it reacted over the last two years.

I will mention several of the schemes available to help businesses survive. The employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, was one of the main ones. We started with the temporary wage subsidy scheme, TWSS, which I believe was availed of by 67,000 businesses and 690,000 employees. When the EWSS came in, a smaller number of employers but a larger number of employees availed of it. It is important to point out how important it was in keeping employees in work and in supporting businesses. We then had the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, which allowed businesses to offset some of the additional costs they were incurring over the period.

The tax warehousing was a huge benefit to some. As the Minister said, it was only 10% of the total taxes businesses applied for. I think 90,000 individual companies applied for it and €2.9 billion has been put into warehousing. The challenge for businesses now is that they must pay that off. That is an added burden on some of the businesses. None of us anticipated during Covid-19 that when we came out of it, we would end up with a cost-of-living crisis, and on top of the cost-of-living crisis, we would have a war in Europe that would add significantly to the cost of doing business.The Government has reacted as best it can. There is no point in standing here and saying it can offset every cost. No Government can offset every cost. The Government has taken a very good approach. Initially, it targeted supports to the most vulnerable in society to help them through the cost-of-living crisis and then it had targeted measures through the excise duty and the VAT on fuel and gas. Those measures must be welcomed also. Overall, I very much welcome this Bill, which went from a Covid Bill to a cost-of-living Bill to a war in Europe Bill. It gave the Minister the vehicle to allow him to bring in certain measures that will help offset costs in the future.

I will conclude on a positive note. A number of colleagues mentioned the Minister's announcement today on VAT in the hospitality sector. As he is aware, I am directly involved in hospitality. The measure was greatly welcomed by everybody within our sector. It is very important that we maintain the 9% VAT rate, especially when we add in the cost of living, because it is all about our margins, which were tight, and they got tighter with the cost-of-living increases. It is important that we have the security of retaining the 9% rate for at least another six months and then we might even discuss extending it a bit longer. When we look at the VAT rate on hospitality, we seem to be spending more time at 9% than we do at 13.5%. I wonder if the true rate for the hospitality sector is at the lower one rather than the 13.5% rate. Overall, the Government can take credit for how it has handled the previous two years and the current cost-of-living crisis. We support the Bill.