Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

With regard to lending to small and medium enterprises, I wish to approach this from a different angle. I gather, from reading the international financial press in recent months - that is, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and so on - that essentially, as far as investment is concerned, capitalism in the eurozone is in a state of paralysis. The figures that were given indicated the percentage of investment to gross domestic product is at a 60-year low within the eurozone, with a figure of €2 trillion in uninvested profits by big business sitting in banks and financial institutions. I have seen a figure for Ireland, which I cannot source precisely, of perhaps €32 billion of uninvested profits within a short period. Does AIB find substantial corporate funds resting in its accounts that are not going into productive use - that is, towards investment, job creation and so on - considering that the number of unemployed within the European Union is 25 million? Can the witnesses see this phenomenon here at a local level?