Covid-19 (Enterprise, Trade and Employment): Statements
Dail Éireann — 2021-02-18
============================================================

Catherine Connolly (IND), Galway West

I welcome the opportunity to bring a number of matters to the attention of the Minister and I hope I will leave him enough time to respond to one or two of them. I appreciate the supports that have been introduced – one could not help but appreciate them – including the PUP, EWSS and CRSS. Without those, businesses would be completely gone.
I refer to loan forbearance. The Minister may recall that during the first lockdown the CEOs of Ireland's five retail banks met the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and a five-point plan was laid out. One part of the plan involved loan forbearance which would not affect the credit rating of businesses. It was a very good initiative. I understand such a scheme is not in place. I have been contacted by small businesses and hotels that require loans without their credit rating being affected. I know it is not the area of responsibility of the Minister, but is it something he has raised with the Minister for Finance?

---

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/2021-02-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-02-18