Dr. Kieran McQuinn:

My colleagues have a research programme with the Department of Finance which looks explicitly at banking issues, in particular small and medium enterprises, SMEs. It monitors the response of the SME sector to issues generally but in particular, at the moment, the pandemic. It may well be the case that some of that research is looking at targeting or identifying debt levels among SMEs and trying to identify whether something can be done from a policy perspective to alleviate debt levels so that when the opportunity arises, those firms are in a position to bounce back and bounce back fairly aggressively. That is something that should be considered, in that if there are firm which would have been perfectly viable before Covid-19 but are now saddled with higher levels of debt because of the pandemic and shutdown, can something be done to target those businesses and their debt positions so they can move forward and recover with a great degree of confidence? That is possibly a policy measure that could be considered. As I said, my colleagues are looking at those issues and will have research fairly imminently on the likely areas that could be pinpointed.