Business Supports Dail Éireann — 2026-04-28 ============================================================ Alan Dillon (FG), Mayo I understand the concern raised by the Deputy, and I certainly do not underestimate the challenges many retail businesses face. That is why we have undertaken interventions in March and April in regard to the ongoing energy crisis we face. We have also looked at VAT changes, which will be introduced in July of this year, in respect of many cafés and small coffee shops. We have also looked at the targeted grants for local enterprise offices around cost reduction and digital adaptation. This is important. As I said earlier, we want to ensure that many retailers have consistency around cost certainty, simplification and where we can inform policy and inform regulators in regard to challenges or burdens being placed on retailers. This is why that exercise within the forum is not a box-ticking exercise. We want to look at the situation structurally and see where we can identify cost pressures and alleviate many of them to ensure the viability of businesses. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-28