Ms Sinéad Dooley:

I thank the Chairman and committee for the invitation here today. It is heartening that the committee recognises the credit unions and Irish Rural Link, IRL, as being part of the overall discussion. I have watched other groups present to the committee as well. There is a common theme. As someone with 14 years' experience of being a public representative, two of the most common obstacles I have found that affect SMEs trying to get into and stay in business is, first, commercial rates, which is always a discussion ahead the budgetary process at the end of every year and, second, access to finance. It is not just access to finance. The key to it is access to competitively priced finance, which is what all of the committee's discussions have been about.

I hope today's discussion has been an eye-opener for elected members and Oireachtas Members because IRL, as anyone who knows us, does not just advocate on behalf of rural areas. What we endeavour to do on every issue is to come to the table with solutions. We are in a healed economy and we need to heal the banking system. We are not here to bring the problems. We all know what they are.

We are trying to bring about solutions as to how we can make finance more readily available and to try to start to rebuild sustainable economies. The one uncertainty at the moment is Brexit but the one certainty is an ability within the Irish people to build their own economies if they are given the tools to do so. That is our job, that is, to try to provide the tools across the board - finance being one of them - to allow people to do that. Arising from today's discussions, if one thing has been borne out for us in Irish Rural Link, IRL, in terms of why we got involved from day one, it is that we have been appealing to Members and Governments to set up the task force. There is a serious need for round table discussions with all stakeholders to the helm to see how we can all work together to try to bring about those solutions. There has never been a better time to do so. I was delighted with much of what Senator Reilly said but the one thing I have found frustrating is the number of reports that continually tell us that there is no obstacle to accessing finance and yet the number of loan rejections has gone through the roof. I was delighted that the Senator pointed that out because that for us has been the reality on the ground. In every seminar we have run, in every community we go into, they are the real life stories we hear, of people trying to increase their workforce and of trying to get involved in research and development but they cannot get access to finance.

I thank the committee again for this opportunity. We look forward to the report being published and working with all stakeholders to see how we can bring about positive change in communities.