Mr. Peter Brown:

The answer is that we are too small, to be brutally honest. The SMEs are too small and we are too small. The people who would buy that type of equity are not in Ireland but are abroad, and Ireland is too small a market. One could create a very tiny market but it would have no liquidity and would not attract anything.

I was talking to an SME during the week and I can give the committee an idea of what SMEs are struggling with. The enterprise is an importer and must buy dollars. The dollar has risen by 30% since May 2014. I said to the person that surely his bank brought him in and gave some support and advice on it, but there was no contact from the bank at all. He said their bank would not have the expertise to even discuss it with the enterprise. When one starts from there, one is then looking at SMEs raising equity, floating it and so forth. To be honest, it is a step too far for our SMEs. There are a small number, perhaps in the technology area, but they are in the venture capital area to a greater extent than in any other area.

In response to Deputy Donnelly, there is a culture of how quickly one can get one's company to profit, what is its worth and how quickly one can get the money. We suffer from that culture in the SME sector, unfortunately. The reality is that the Irish market is not sophisticated and the financial services professionals within it are not as sophisticated as they would like a person to think they are. My company is involved in diplomas in investing and in educating the investor to see that there are alternatives to just leaving one's money on deposit in a bank. However, it is a very scary thing for many people to mention a bond because they will be asked what it is. The level of education on the investor side is very small and certainly a leap into buying SME stocks is a long way away.