Mr. Seamus Boland:

Sinéad Dooley has just joined us. She is learning a great deal at present. It does not have anything to do with that, in the sense that it is two or three years since we started the proposal.

Part of our thinking would be that even putting a pilot project in one area might not be the wisest thing to do. This could be a finding from the Department of Finance. One is either going to set it up or one is not. One is either sure or one is not. The brave and wisest thing to do would be to approve the concept, look at the investment needed and where the capitalisation is going to happen, set the legislation in place to make it happen and then be wholeheartedly behind it. That is the right thing to do.

Mr. Bergmann can disagree with me on the following, but I do not want to see one area picked because the rest of the members will be giving out hell about it. I want the eight areas to be picked. I want the legislation to be put in place, the regulation, finance and capitalisation sorted, the central services office set up, and to start with the eight because we are either with this or against it.

I remind the committee - Deputy Kelly knows this because I set up a small piggery with the assistance of ACC when no one else would help me - that it is not as if we have not tried this previously. Even though it is popular to say that the banking pillar establishment has made such a hames of things and is still recovering, the reason we had to establish ACC and ICC in the 1970s and 1980s was precisely the same reason as now in that the main banking pillar establishments find it difficult to deal with the thousands of small businesses, companies and farmers. Of farmers who have done well over the years, I guarantee 90% of them started out with a small loan from ACC, not the pillar banks.

It is nothing to do with the recession or with the banking collapse. It is the reality of pillar banks. It is the same in Germany. The pillar banks are not the best supporters. Deputy Kelly asked if they wiped the floor with them. The truth is that they did not really want to be there in the first place.