Energy support for businesses
Deputy Carroll MacNeill highlights huge energy bill increases for businesses and the unfairness for new firms without a comparable baseline. The Taoiseach says the support scheme will be flexible and responsive to legitimate cases, subject to state aid rules.
I am aware the Taoiseach addressed the business supports on a macro level earlier this morning. It is clear the Government is backing business and helping companies to pay their energy bills this winter. An example of that in my own constituency is a retail food business that had a bill of €1,300 for two months last year and this year it is €6,932. It is an extraordinary increase for the same reference period.
Here is the point of difference. There is another business in Blackrock that is about to open a retail food business, an equivalent business, and because it does not have the equivalent reference period from last year, it looks like it will receive no support from the Government. The point of the whole scheme is to keep businesses open and employment going. They have made the investment and they are ready to rock and ready to open. However, it seems that because this administrative tag is missing, they will not get support under the business scheme. Is there a way of looking at either a differentiation within it or a separate sub-scheme for those businesses that are clearly in the process of opening? They have leases and they have made all of the investment. It is very clear that they are there already and are ready to rock, except for these sorts of bills.
Comment on this
The Minister will no doubt add more details to the design of the scheme. This has to go through the commission as well. The commission has already created a temporary state aid crisis framework. As we work through this scheme, obviously issues like this will arise and we will respond. This scheme will be responsive, basically. We want to have some degree of flexibility to cover legitimate cases that will arise. It is about job preservation and job protection. I will talk to the Minister about that, but I think he is aware of those.