Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his good wishes. SMEs are the foundation of the economy, accounting for 99.8% of all enterprises and the majority of employment in the State. Their importance to our economy is reflected in our programme for Government commitments. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and I, as Minister for Finance, jointly chair the SME State bodies group, bringing together SME representative bodies and other stakeholders including State agencies to identify and understand current challenges businesses face. My Department also conducts the SME credit demand survey to gain insight into the experience of SMEs in the economy accessing credit.

While the responsibility for enterprise policy rests with the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, one of my responsibilities as Minister for Finance is to ensure viable businesses that wish to access credit from bank and non-bank sources can do so. The credit review office and the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, were established as bodies under the aegis of my Department for this purpose. The credit review office assists SMEs and farm borrowers that have had credit applications of up to €3 million refused or, indeed, an existing credit facility withdrawn or amended by the participating bank.

The SBCI provides and promotes the provision of credit to SMEs and increases the availability of appropriately priced, flexible funding to viable SMEs. It has supported lending of €3.2 billion to more than 50,000 SMEs since 2015, from all sectors of the economy and across a wide geographical spread, using a mix of low-cost liquidity and guarantees. The SBCI has a number of schemes launched and in development to support SMEs to access credit. These include the growth and sustainability loan scheme, the energy efficiency loan scheme and the Ukraine credit guarantee scheme.

In addition to the schemes launched and in development by the SBCI, a range of direct and indirect measures were introduced to support SMEs in response to the challenges posed by Covid-19 and the invasion of Ukraine, including the tax debt warehousing scheme and the temporary business energy support scheme, the latter of which is supporting a broad range of businesses that have experienced a significant increase in natural gas and electricity prices.

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