Ms Patricia Callan:

Senator White raised the SME funding. Let there be no doubt this is the number one priority issue. It is not directly relevant to today's agenda, which is the reason we have not talked about it ad nauseam but we certainly do. In terms of the membership of the Small Firms Association, 27% of our members view this as a critical issue for them in terms of ongoing development. Now it is divided into two specific problems that we need to tackle. In the first instance, it is a case of a viable business which is trading well and the employees are fine but it is bogged down by the owner's involvement with other properties or other developments or something else and it is all tied into the business. We need to find a mechanism of separating out the various strands and doing a very serious piece of work to ensure we save more businesses and thus allow the banks to continue to finance them. The banks will always use the term 'viable'. Viable means a risk assessment and they are risk averse.

A more recent problem, which is potentially an issue of greater concern further down the line is that developing and growing businesses which are not borderline or in difficulty, find that it is taking at least three months to get a decision on their proposals from the bank. They are not getting what they necessarily need. The amount of paperwork, the form filling and the hoops they have to jump through is shocking.