Anthony Lawlor (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I refer to the analogy of the aunt coming in and criticising the furniture but sometimes we should criticise the aunt because she might not always have her make-up matching her clothes. I compare this analogy to the banking sector, where they are a bit critical of the amount of funding that has been made available to SMEs while there is plenty of funding available to SMEs.

I suggest that we should go to the EU which is all talk about putting together another source of funding rather than the banking system. We are meeting with deputy director Crespo tomorrow who has spoken about this on a number of occasions. I suggest the Government should be forceful in its manner with the EU and say that they should help us out.

There is a difficulty in finding the correct conduit to bring the available funding to the SME sector. AIB is finding it difficult to access the fund and to be the conduit for the funding to SMEs but this does not seem to be a problem for Bank of Ireland. We need help from the EU to be able to provide some form of conduit for that funding. The world is awash with money at the moment and there are lots of investors with funds seeking to put their money somewhere. Bonds are at an all-time low so they are getting no returns from bonds. It is no use having money in the banks because the overnight rate is negative. Maybe the Government should ask the EU to help us to put this funding into proper SME use.