Mr. Mark O'Mahoney:

Very probably. The concept of a lot of people losing a small amount of money is not necessarily a good thing either. In particular, for the private investor or householder whom we are trying to encourage to invest by taking their money out of lower-returning deposit accounts and moving it into a more productive use of capital, some form of investor protection is needed. Similarly to the Deputy's question about hot money, a lot of people pumping money into quasi-blind investments is not necessarily a good thing. Such investments need to be managed appropriately, and regulatory infrastructure is probably one of the main barriers to the effective use of crowd-funding. It is probably quite effective at the moment in smaller projects. We need appropriate oversight and regulation if we want to bring this option up to the scale at which SMEs can benefit and investors can earn an appropriate return.