Mr. Pat Farrell:

I will try to cover all the questions asked. If I miss something I hope members will come back to me.

I am seeking, in a respectful way, to present facts. These are facts that are corroborated by third parties. They are not hypothetical but are based on real experience and data collected on what is happening in the SME sector.

The Credit Review Office consistently reports that somewhere between 80% and 85% of credit applications are approved. Thus, if 80,000 loans are approved, there must have been approximately 100,000 applications.

Reference was made to the turnaround time. I recently saw the figure of 60% cited as the percentage of loan applications approved within 15 working days. That figure should be 100%, although I know banks are working to bring down the approval time so there is a much faster turnaround time. I suspect some of this delay is caused by the issue Mr. Trethowan referred to: a business making an application does not always arrive with the correct information.

The issue of discouraged loans is a perennial one. If we want to get a handle on the level of refusals, businesses must make formal applications. Meeting a bank manager in the golf club, outside the church or in the corner shop and having a "how are you fixed?" type of conversation does not constitute an application. A bank cannot make an evaluation based on that kind of casual encounter. Members know that if a constituent comes to them with a case they need to gather all the salient facts before they can make a judgment. A formal application must be made, tedious as it may be. Businesses are run by entrepreneurs, who are extraordinarily resilient individuals. They would not survive in business otherwise. They have to be equally resilient in making sure they put in a formal application. If that formal application is put together in a robust way with all the salient facts, demonstrates the sustainability of the business and provides all the required information, it stands an excellent chance of success.

If it does not get credit, the Credit Review Office will make an independent evaluation and issue a judgment. In some cases the complaint is upheld and in other cases it is not upheld. I wish to reiterate that people should make a formal application for credit; if one does not ask, one will not know.

The matter of branch infrastructure is a case of cause and effect. We have to stand back for a moment and consider what is happening in the Irish banking sector. As a result of correct decisions which have been made externally, the balance sheets of the Irish banks have been significantly reduced. This is an absolute requirement of the restructuring of the Irish banking system. The banks are also required to significantly reduce their costs. For instance, the chief executive of one of the banks attended another committee meeting last week at which he cited a figure of 27,000 staff in the bank at the height of the economic boom and the figure is now 12,000, more than a halving of the number of staff. That level of restructuring by means of a reduction of overheads and infrastructure is bound to have an impact. That does not mean that the systems go to pieces at the other end but it poses significant challenges in a transition period. This is the situation which banks have to manage at the moment. At the committee meeting last week, both chief executives made the point that they are restructuring their operations in order to put more of a focus on decision-making at the front line. However, there are reasons for their decision to centralise some credit decisions such as quality and review considerations. It is not easy to get this right.

I endorse what was said about Senator Quinn. We invited Senator Quinn to speak at last year's banking conference. We all have lots to learn from people like Senator Quinn on how to interact with the customer and satisfy customers' needs. Banks are on this journey. We know that in the period of the boom, banks were very focused on asset-backed lending and very exposed to construction and property lending. The needs of the real economy today are centred in the small and medium enterprises sector and in the export sector. These are the needs that banks must serve. New skills need to be acquired rapidly so that banks can best serve the needs of the emerging parts of the economy. Our colleagues in the Institute of Bankers in Ireland have introduced education and training initiatives to which Mr. Trethowan referred in his report. These are directed specifically at improving the skills and capabilities of banking staff to lend to small and medium enterprises and to the new and emerging sectors of the economy.

The banks are not ignoring the United Kingdom market. Ireland is in the eurozone. The vast majority of SME exports are to continental Europe, much more so than to the UK. I do not have information about the UK market but I will endeavour to get it and to supply it to the Deputy. I am sure most people read the UK newspapers from time to time which describe the very same challenges and issues that obtain in the UK market with regard to access to credit and the distress for small and medium enterprises. I do not think there is a fundamental difference in the two markets.