Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

The genesis of this was back in 2016 when there was a dairy price crisis. We received two tranches of money under the exceptional measures provision we are now speaking about for beef. For the first of these tranches, we sent the money to every dairy farmer in the country. For the second, we decided we would use it in a better way to leverage loan funding for farmers and there seemed to be a demand in the scheme. The first of these schemes was €150 million and we put in upfront money to meet first losses and as an interest subsidy. That was available to farmers. This particular Brexit scheme came from that idea. It was a €300 million scheme through the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation and us. It was intended for SMEs as a working capital loan scheme because that seemed to be what was required. We put in €9 million and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation put in €14 million for first losses and interest subsidies. We worked with the SBCI and European Investment Bank to create the loan fund of €300 million.