James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government has put in place micro-finance and various other initiatives to ensure further availability of finances for SMEs. Sparkasse bank representatives were before another committee. Sparkasse is an independent 200-year-old community bank from Germany seeking to set up here. It specialises in old-style banking that entails walking the land with the farmer or going to the business to see how it works and understand it. In other words, it is a question of learning to lend for business again instead of doing what happened in the past, which was lending based on property alone. Would the delegates like to share their views on what I believe are significant opportunities in this regard?