Mr. Nick Ashmore:

We are in active dialogue with the Department on that. Funding has been allocated in the budget for 2018. We are working to bring that to market as soon as we can but there is a need for a time period between the launch of schemes because we are restricted in only having three significant banks that lend to SMEs. Our ability to bring schemes to market is unfortunately serial rather than parallel. We have to allow a scheme to bed in and then run through the process of launching the next scheme. A gap of at least six to eight months is required between launches to deliver that, but we are in active dialogue. In fact, we are due to meet the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine tomorrow to discuss that process.