Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Investment Commitments to SME Sector: National Treasury Management Agency

2:45 pm

Mr. Eugene O'Callaghan:

Yes. The reality is that if one of them has 100% of the market in France, there will be a market in Germany, Italy and so forth for good companies.

Second, you mentioned the concept of displacement possibly being used as an excuse. We are actually quite the converse. Our biggest objective is to deploy the €6.8 billion on a sensible commercial basis in Ireland. We are looking for the opposite, namely, the reason to do things. However, we also make the point, which we have not emphasised in this conversation, that we have allocated 20% of the fund to assist with the normalisation of capital and financial markets in Ireland, even where there might be displacement. Clearly, it is a question of whom one believes and obviously there is plenty of public discussion about the state of financing of the SME market, but even if one assumes that there is some dislocation there compared to normal, we would certainly be prepared to participate even where there is displacement just to help accelerate the normalisation.

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