Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and members for their questions. It is important to recall the reason the scheme was necessary. In a nutshell if one goes back to the first quarter report of the Central Bank of Ireland in 2016, it did a league table of the cost of credit across the eurozone member states. Ireland was firmly rooted in the relegation zone in terms of what people were paying for credit here relative to Austria, which had the most competitive rate at 2.2%, if memory serves me correctly. That is shades of the point made by Deputy Penrose. The banks have always managed even in difficult times to make its Irish customers pay a premium rate. There are many reasons for that and I do not want to go into them today.

When we received the €11 million as part of the EU compensation package last year, which was available across all the livestock sector, our thinking was that spreading the money thinly would not give anybody anything of benefit. We added €14 million of Exchequer funding and leveraged €150 million at the interest rate, which was 2.95%. The terms and conditions of the scheme is that loans are up to a maximum of six years, but banks were taking account of individual circumstances. I know that some loans were approved for a period of six years; there are loans that were approved for 12 months; and, there are loans for every period in between these timescales. The banks had discretion in terms of their individual clients. There were options for interest-only loans, and a term of up to six years.

The applicants have access to the Credit Review Office. In terms of managing their loan portfolio, each individual bank will need to manage that. From my personal experience of dealing with the Credit Review Office, they turn the reviews around quickly. In regard to a person who was refused a low interest loan and went to the Credit Review Office, which overturned the bank's decision, I do not imagine the bank would be in a position to say that all the money from the fund is gone and they have to hold funds, pending an outcome of an appeals process. We will take a great interest in the experience of this loan fund. We will learn who drew down the funds, the sectors that were funded and the average size of the loans. From hearing the experience of those in my constituency, my information is that the average loans tend to be in the region of €20,000 to €30,000. There might be some at the very top end, but most are in the average band. I think it shows there is a pent-up demand. For those banks outside the three banks that were participating - AIB, Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank - there is evidence they have responded competitively in terms of other products geared at the agriculture sector. That is what we wanted from this. In many respects it would have been a goad to the banking industry to step up to the plate and provide access to funding.

We will be tracking this and we will get details of the profile, the average loan amount and the average loan in due course.

On Deputy McConalogue's point, if the fund is given out but it is paid back in 12 months, that does not mean the fund is not there. There is €150 million of loan approvals, whether over 12 months or five years, and that is the term of the loan product. We await with interest the full profile returns from the sectors that were involved, including the size of the loans, in order to see what lessons we can learn from it. Generally speaking, I believe the experience has been a positive one.