Mr. Pat Farrell:

I believe the situation is improving. I recently attended the gathering of the Small Firms Association which has ten times more members than ISME, if I am not mistaken. It is a very representative association. The president of the association, Ian Martin, cited four barriers to business. Availability of credit was the fourth barrier. The top item was the inability to get payment from other creditors over a reasonable period of time. Other issues included the cost of doing business and the issue of regulation which is a somewhat hardy annual for all businesses.

On the question of the customers of Bank of Scotland (Ireland) and other banks, part of the new lending by banks has been to refinance former customers of those banks who exited from the market.

That is a conscious act on the part of another bank - to take a brand new business and extend loans to it to replace the loans that were hitherto in place from the other bank. It is not a casual job but involves seriously valuing the businesses. If these companies were not refinanced they would find themselves going out of business.

On the question of the level of credit ten years ago and now, I do not have that figure. We will see if we can get that.