Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 29 June 2017

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Capital Investment: European Investment Bank

10:00 am

Mr. Andrew McDowell:

Yes. On infrastructure, we can lend to a government directly. The advantage to a government is very cheap funding. We can also lend to a private promoter who is contracted with a government through a public private partnership to deliver on infrastructure or we can lend to commercial semi-state companies under their own capital programmes. These latter two are off a government's balance sheet. We also lend directly to the private sector but it has to be in eligible categories. We do not lend just for anything. It must be for new investment projects in eligible categories of investment for the bank to the private sector. We can lend directly to large companies, but we will really not do a loan directly to a company unless it is of more €7.5 million to €10 million. If it is a smaller company, we will intermediate the loan through the banking system.

We will lend to the banks, which lend to smaller companies with smaller loans.

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