Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I sincerely thank the members for their contributions and will deal with the points raised by Deputies Murphy O'Mahony, Fitzmaurice and the Chairman. Deputy Murphy O'Mahony raised the issue of access to finance. She instanced the case of paying €700 to an accountant to make a loan application to a bank. People can judge for themselves the wisdom of doing that. I certainly was not aware of any obligation in that scheme for that level of input when making the application. A person who is refused it always feels aggrieved and understandably that product was oversubscribed. There are new products in the market now and I know representatives of the banks will address the committee shortly. I will not make further commentary on that.

I wish to address a few points Deputy Fitzmaurice made, lest they be allowed to stand as fact. We reopened GLAS and took in everybody who applied. We have achieved the 50,000 target. There is not an unspent number there. We took in everybody who wanted to join the scheme. There is now a proposal to reopen it.