Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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23. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the budgetary analysis being carried out to plan for long Covid-19 impacts in his Department and each State agency under the remit of his Department, in tabular form. [4484/21]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Covid-19 has and will continue to have very serious impacts for the whole of society. My Department has been to the forefront of the response to Covid-19 to develop appropriate measures to cushion the impacts of the pandemic on enterprises, workers and consumers.

In 2020 my Department secured an unprecedented increase of almost €1 billion in additional funding as part of the Government’s immediate response to the pandemic. This additional funding allowed the Department and our Enterprise Agencies to roll out a range of vital measures to assist businesses to survive the impact of Covid-19. These measures included the Restart Grant, the Online Retail Scheme, the Covid Products Scheme, Business Continuity Vouchers, the Sustaining Enterprise Fund, the Covid Credit Guarantee Scheme and a range of other targeted initiatives.

Given the continuing economic impacts of Covid, Budget 2021 was framed to ensure that the necessary supports can continue to be accessed by businesses and workers. As well as providing over €16 billion in additional funding to support the delivery of public services this year, the Budget also established a €3.4 billion Recovery Fund for continuing the economic response to Covid and indeed Brexit.

Insofar as my own Department is concerned, additional funding in the region of €150 million was provided in Budget 2021 to fund our activities this year. The vast majority of this funding will be focussed on ensuring that the range of our Covid targeted capital supports such as the Covid Credit Guarantee Scheme, Future Growth Loan Scheme, Micro Finance Ireland Loan Scheme, Trading on Line Voucher Scheme can continue to be accessed by businesses. The additional current funding secured for the DETE Vote will also ensure that our Regulatory Agencies such as the Health and Safety Authority, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and the National Standards Authority of Ireland can continue to meet the very significant increase in demands that the pandemic has placed on them.

The Tables below sets out some detail of the additional funding provided to the Department’s Agency Programmes in 2020 and 2021.

In addition a further €100m in funding will be provided as initial tranche of funding from the Recovery Fund to support enterprise as they battle the Covid challenge.

The enterprise supports being provided by my Department are part of the Government’s continued response to Covid including measures such as the EWSS, PUP, CRSS schemes. I and my Department continue to actively engage across Government to ensure the necessary measures remain available to cushion the impacts of the pandemic on enterprises and workers.