Mr. Aidan Gough:

One would expect there to be a lag in employment. It is a business-led recovery in that it is businesses that are exporting and innovating that are leading the recovery. We surveyed that and we are seeing that businesses that say they are being innovative in some way or another, not necessarily in high end research and technology - they could be innovating in the way they are delivering their services, the types of products or whatever - are three times more likely to be growing than those who are not innovating. It is the same with exporting companies. These types of businesses are leading the recovery, and we are seeing the recovery taking place North and South. It is lagging in terms of job creation but it is hoped we will see the jobs recovery taking pace over the next year or so.

On the SME funding environment, because we work with small to micro-businesses we survey them to find out what their requirements are and we are finding, and this applies to our own agency as well, that too many of these small micro-businesses do not know the supports that are available for them. Even if they have heard of the agencies and programmes, they are not sure how they fit in and what is available for them. That is one of the key problems for us, and it is one we have highlighted in the access to finance report, namely, that we must improve the flow of information to small micro-type businesses.