Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

As to what can be done about it, in terms of the follow-on to the business expansion scheme, my specific proposals in the submission are that we need to reduce the risk individual investors will take on. We have examined the State aid rules because when one goes into these types of schemes they are very much tied up with the EU State aid rules. We have look at experiences in the Netherlands and Austria, in particular, where government has guaranteed some of the risk for the individual investors and we seem to have got a good behavioural response from that. We think that could make quite an impact. As I said previously, the business expansion scheme worked because a small group of investors saw the advertisement in The Sunday Business Post and went to their advisers and put money into it. It worked and sustained many good businesses We need to cast the net much wider, we also need proper promotion and branding of the scheme and some technical changes need to be made to it, but I would hate to see us give up on it because it could make a real different in terms of funding for SMEs.