Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There will be more institutions involved with this arrangement. The risk is spread and we are trying to bring people along with us on this. The experience of the scheme did not meet our expectations initially and we are broadening it and including the SBCI. There will be more success in doing this. In spreading the risk, more SMEs will become involved. We need to promote this, which is very important, and there will be higher coverage of individual loans. This is going to work. The 75% figure has been increased to 80%, which might be relatively marginal, but it will work, according to our calculations. We want people to use this to its fullest extent so that as many lenders can be involved as is possible. As I said earlier, we are not excluding any form of alternative financing arrangements. We went into the details of that earlier. We believe this will succeed but we want to fundamentally ensure the exposure for the State is limited. By including the SBCI and leveraging additional resources from Europe, we can spread that risk.