Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2021-06-24
============================================================

Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West

I thank the Deputy. This matter has been raised by Ministers in our interactions with the banks.
As the Deputy knows, it is a tricky issue. If somebody is in receipt of the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, by definition, the company he or she works for must be down 30% or more in terms of turnover. While that does not mean that person's job is at risk, it means it is more at risk than someone who works for a company that is not in receipt of the wage subsidy scheme.
Banks cannot turn a blind eye to that when it comes to calculating risk. We need to be honest about that. Again, however, I understand the case the Deputy has made. In our engagement with the banks, we make the point that while this is a commercial decision for them and they must assess it as part of their risk calculation, they need to be sensitive to people and have regard to that.

---

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/2021-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-06-24