Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 27 March 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Overview of Operations: Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland

2:00 pm

Mr. Nick Ashmore:

We were using European Commission exceptional aid as well as Government support and we were targeting a situation in the market that was identified at a European level where the whole gamut of livestock funding - the Government extended it into non-livestock as well - was suffering that year due to a number of different geopolitical events, such as the Russian crisis and milk prices crashing. That created a working capital issue among farmers who were heavily reliant on merchant credit and overdrafts, which are very expensive, and it was eating into farm income and the net sustainable farm income for the year. There is also a category of farmers who are in a very difficult situation where they may have over-leveraged in the past and are looking to restructure. That is a very difficult situation to extend credit into with guarantees or otherwise.

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