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

To come back to Deputy Cahill's point, the scheme was for a maximum of six years. It did not state that every loan applicant was entitled to six years. The State's input was to subsidise the loan and address a market gap. It was not a question of the State getting into the banking business. It was unsecured credit, a subsidised interest rate, an option for interest only, for a maximum of six years. That did not mean that every loan was going to be approved at six years. After those elements of the scheme were designed any individual loan application was subject to normal banking considerations.

Valid points have been raised. This has been in many respects a maiden voyage for the Department to address a gap in the market. Broadly speaking, the interest in it has proved that it was a wise route to take in terms of the funding we had to play around with. As soon as we can gather and collate the information we intend to do that and see what lessons we can learn from it. At this stage we cannot draw those conclusions and it would be wrong to do so. The questions are: Why was it one, two or six years in different circumstances; what sectors benefited; what message do we take from the fact that it may have been excessively dairy and tillage rather than beef and is there another issue to be addressed in other sectors? The €11 million that the European Union, EU, put into it has to be drawn down by the end of September 2017. That is the absolute deadline by which we will have all the data. I suspect, given the level of interest, that it will be much earlier than that. Establishing the approvals, drawdowns, rejections, the reasons why and who benefited, what the terms were and the conclusions we can draw from all of that information are important exercises from our point of view. We will undertake them in conjunction with the banks involved and the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, at the earliest possible date.