Mr. John Trethowan:

One must join all the dots to get the picture. The Red C survey and the Mazars survey that preceded it show that less than 40% of Irish businesses demand credit at this point. They have been deleveraging. One will see from the figures that repayments have been almost twice the amount that banks have been willing to lend in the past years. People are paying down debt in the SME sector in a similar way to the personal sector.