Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 29:

In page 11, after line 28, to insert the following:“10. The Minister shall within 12 months and every 12 months thereafter, from the passing of this Act prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report detailing the impact of all measures contained in this Act on the availability of credit to SMEs, rates of bank lending to SMEs, levels of lending under the scheme and relevant default.”.

I submitted this amendment because this scheme had a rocky start. We have come through one of the deepest credit crises for enterprise and we are still not out of the woods in that regard. Figures from ISME for the last quarter show that there are still major difficulties with obtaining credit. We have dealt with a lot of the elements of this amending Bill before and many of the issues we are amending were discussed at the initial stages by members of the Opposition, myself included. We must keep an eye on the outputs of this legislation and make sure that we measure its impact on entrepreneurs and small businesses in the future. The amendment provides that if the provisions of this Bill are still limping along, we can rectify the problem at the earliest opportunity.