Mr. Ed Farrell:

A social housing proposal was launched a month ago and we are days from launching a similar paper proposing a central vehicle for SME lending. An accountancy firm is assisting us with these proposals and it is familiar with the workings of, and the people in, the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland. Some of the proposals in the paper will consider the question of the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland providing funding to banks to lend on. It will ask whether we could be a part of the on-lending, although the credit unions would not provide funding to the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland for it to give to the pillar banks to on-lend. We would try to work with a slightly different model. It will be our money ultimately going to SMEs in the localities of our various credit unions. The paper will be out in a couple of weeks and we will have a meeting with those people to see if there could be a solution there.