Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

53. To ask the Minister for Finance if a decision on a temporary wage subsidy scheme application by a business (details supplied) in County Kerry will be reviewed to allow the business to reopen and in view of the circumstances; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13204/20]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) is an emergency measure to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy. The underlying legislation and the scheme itself were developed within a very short timeframe to support the urgent Government objective of getting much needed assistance to employers and employees, where businesses have been seriously affected by the necessary restrictions introduced to fight the pandemic. The overarching ambition of the scheme is to ensure the key relationship between employers and employees is maintained to the greatest extent possible so that businesses can restart operations quickly once the crisis has passed.

The TWSS builds on data returned to Revenue by employers through the real-time PAYE System for January and February 2020. The key eligibility criteria for the scheme, as prescribed in the underlying law, are that -

- the business is  suffering significant negative economic impact due to the pandemic,

- the employees were on the payroll at 29 February 2020, and

- the employer had fulfilled its PAYE reporting obligations for February 2020 by 15 March 2020, which was recently extended, by concession, to ‘before’ 1 April 2020.

The latter two criteria were particularly designed to prevent abuse and exploitation of the scheme.

Revenue has advised me that the weekly payroll submissions for February 2020 in respect of the business in question were not received until 10 June 2020, which is significantly outside of the ‘before’ 1 April 2020 deadline. Revenue has further confirmed that the January and March 2020 payroll submissions were also not received until 10 June 2020 and that over the course of 2019, payroll submissions were generally not received until well after the required deadlines. It is for these reasons that the business cannot access the TWSS and it is not possible for Revenue to design systems that will allow entry to the scheme where the legislative requirements have not been adhered to.