Martin Heydon
Question:2. Deputy Martin Heydon asked the Taoiseach the number of businesses that will experience a fall in revenue of 10% or more in 2020. [12327/20]
View answerTuesday, 23 June 2020
Questions (2)
Written answers
The exact information requested by the Deputy is not available. However, the Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey conducted by the Central Statistics Office gives some indications of how turnover has been impacted by the crisis. This survey was introduced by the CSO to measure and report quickly on the key features of how the COVID-19 crisis has affected business in Ireland. Two waves of the survey have been published so far and the results for Wave 3 of the survey are being published this week.
The results from the first wave of the survey, published on 1 May, estimated that 54% of businesses had turnover at least 10% below normal in quarter one, while 36.2% had turnover close to normal expectation, and 9.8% had higher than normal turnover. When asked about their expectation for quarter two, three quarters of businesses expected their turnover to be at least 10% lower than normal in the second quarter, 18.6% expected turnover to be close to normal, and only 6.6% expected turnover to be higher than normal in quarter two.
Because of the sample size and design of the survey, and in particular the inability of some businesses to respond, these figures should be considered as indicative rather than definitive estimates of the impact on turnover so far. Future waves of the survey will continue to provide updates on the impacts on business.