Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

While it is not the subject of this meeting, it has been mentioned twice, both by ISIF and by the Minister of State. The first thing that the SBCI advertised on its website was lower interest rates. The website gives the example of a loan of €400,000 through ISIF in comparison with existing leasing or loans and the difference is approximately €30,000. It is almost 50% to 60% of the cost of an existing loan in the regular market. I will park that to one side now, however, because it is not the subject of this meeting. I wanted to say that SBCI provides cheaper, flexible loans.

I missed that section of the meeting during which Deputy Michael McGrath went through the figures provided in great detail but there seems to be a mismatch in terms of those figures. The figures that were presented to this committee heretofore are €36 million in global investments and €252 million in debt instruments, which are typically between three and five years. These figures combined give the €288 million figure, with which the Minister of State agrees. We then move on to the other investments, namely the investment portfolio of €3.5 billion, which is pooled funds. The portion of that to be captured by this legislation is €30 million. That is what has been presented to us by ISIF. A figure is now being presented to us of €1 billion and it is important that we get some clarification, now or later, of how those figures can stand side by side.